


Adjournment

by Val_Creative



Series: One Last Chance [4]
Category: Code Geass
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - High School, Angsty Schmoop, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gore, Humor, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Racism, Romance, Teacher-Student Relationship, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-25 20:55:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You do not disappoint to make a perfect appearance," Lelouch addressed him, tossing him the sword. "Go on then. For our beloved countries. Kill me once again."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> A very special thanks to DiamondMask for being my AU partner.

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"This can be very easily solved, Lelouch Lamperouge."

His psychiatrist gestured with an open hand to the half-cracked window above her head, swelling with white sunshine. Her tanned, Japanese features stretched with an uncomplaining smile on him. He sat across from her with dark lines under his eyes, and he frowned distrustfully at her. "See what a beautiful day it is becoming? Wouldn't you like to enjoy it with your loved ones? We can get in touch with them… and you can be released from this institute _today_ …"

"Under… _what_ conditions exactly?" Lelouch asked her, snorting offhandedly. He crossed his bare arms (his nurses regulated how long his sleeves were — and since he was a previously offending Refrain addict, his sleeves barely reached the length of his mid-bicep). "That I confess to a habit that I have _broken_ for a substantial amount of time? That I confess to _nightmares_ I no longer have?"

She dropped her hand into her lap.

"You were a teacher, weren't you, Lelouch?" Her gaze on him softened in sympathy as his shoulders clenched hard at that underneath his lavender uniform. "You can no longer obtain that position with the same amount of respect in our just society—"

"Our _JUST_ society?" Lelouch tilted his head back to the ceiling with wide, disbelieving eyes, letting out a smiling laugh that also sounded like an outraged bark. " _Is_ that what you call the system where the lowest of the low is condemned for what is in their blood? Do you truly believe in yourself that for being Japanese that you are inferior to everyone else?"

"I am not telling you that is an easy process." She said, her clear blue eyes starting to harden, "I now belong to our Britannian society with the honorary respect that one who was an outcast would hope to achieve one day. But it had not always been true. I had been addicted to Refrain for five years… for a son who was a casualty in the Tokyo settlement war… for a daughter who resented me… and for a husband who was more than happy to reinforce a divorce with his full-Japanese wife for a prettier, rich Britannian lover. The real difference between you and I was that I was willing to ask others for help by the closing stages of my suffering."

Lelouch looked back at her, a little less hostility in his stance, uncrossing his arms. "…what do you want to know then?" he sighed. "If you are truly the success story, then what can you teach me from my experiences?"

"We will get to that in a moment… but first…" The tanned, red-haired woman pressed a button on her speaker.

A small, shy voice emerged from it fuzzily. " _What can I do for you this afternoon, Miss Kouzuki? Does Mr. Lamperouge need to be escorted back to his quarters?_ "

"Not quite, Monica. We will be pushing his slot back for another hour or so. I would actually like you to get in contact with his next-of-kin…"

"… _I see then_. _Tell Mr. Lamperouge congratulations from me then_."

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"Now flex your right hand. But do it slowly." He did so as he was told, his large, emerald green eyes screwing up in concentration. "That's good, Suzaku." The indigo-haired woman with the notepad next to him smiled as she spoke cheerfully, "That's very good. I think that's all the data we will need today."

Suzaku slipped the elbow-length glove streaming with wires off, nodding.

"Is Lloyd in today?" he asked.

"He is… wandering around somewhere, I am sure." Cecile rolled her eyes, amused as her companion let out a small chuckle.

It was refreshing to hear him laugh like that. He rarely ever smiled so genuinely. Ever since…

"Suzaku, I do believe there is a visitor here for youuuu~" Lloyd grinned from the entrance hallway to the training unit, stepping aside to reveal a tall woman with a pale green braid down her back. "She insisted upon coming in," he crooned.

" _Cee-Cee_?" Suzaku gaped, nearly dropping the very expensive piece of training equipment on the floor (his employer's asinine expression wavered for a moment into a warning frown and Cecile drew in a sharp breath of anticipation). "W-What are you doing here?"

"Sending you on an errand if you don't mind." She smirked at his unreserved disbelief, continuing with a shrug of her exposed shoulders, and twirling her cherry-red parasol that was in her fingerless, satin gloved hands — to be honest, it looked like she had escaped from a circus performance. "I just received a call from Yuki Kouzuki. She wanted to know if I could pick up Lelouch from the crazy house today."

"Lelouch's… psychiatrist…?" He could have sworn that his heart skipped a beat or three at the sound of _Lelouch_.

"Yes. If you wouldn't mind, since I have to travel to get Nunnally and Sayoko back into Tokyo—you'd need to take him back to the Clubhouse and babysitting him for three days until we return." A strange and unreadable glint in her golden eyes, but Suzaku did not notice. "…It would be much appreciated."

"A-Are you sure?"

"Oh, I absolutely trust you with him, Suzaku dearest." He _did,_ however, notice the strange wink. Cee-Cee sidled up to him, slipping a paper into his free hand, "Here is the address. Please be careful not to have _too much_ fun."

As she disappeared back out the hallway, twirling parasol and all, Lloyd hmmed loudly. "What was _thaaat~_? A girlfriend of yours, Suzaku?" The young soldier turned pink in his cheeks, stammering out a half shriek, half yell of " _NO_!" Cecile smacked the arm of the now laughing, lilac-haired man.

"Feel free to ignore Lloyd, Suzaku."

"Lelouch, hmm?" Lloyd didn't seem miffed at all by the reprimanding but intrigued by Suzaku suddenly, "That name… Wasn't that the addict boy that came into our hospital a while back?"

"He's _not_ an addict."

His employer sniffed, humored even more as Suzaku's green eyes pinched up irritably, as Lloyd's most important military protégé yet growled forebodingly at him.

"Whatever you say…"

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At the receptionist desk of the psychiatric ward, on the outskirts of the Tokyo settlement (or 'crazy house' as Cee-Cee made a point to identify with that queer, little, toothy smile of hers) — a lean woman with red ribbons tangled in her long, loosely-unprofessional blonde hair stared up at him as he entered from the elevator. Well, it was more like gawking at him from the edge of her Britannian sociology magazine as Suzaku removed his sunglasses.

"a- _ay_ …" She yelped, rising up from her stool and tipping it over in her rush, "… _May I help you_?"

Mentally, he let out a long sigh.

This was not going to be a painless process…was it…?

Suzaku figured that the best case-scenario would be being direct. He forced a very convincing smile that felt like it would cut into the corners of his lips if kept too long. "Hello, miss. I'm here to pick up Lelouch Lamperouge."

"I…I…" The woman stammered — her navy-colored and timid eyes bulging as she pressed a square button on the desk phone. Suzaku's insides coiled like a spring ready to fly _. Calling security? Was she serious?_

Immediately from one of the sets of glass doors, a stern-looking woman stepped out. Her clear blue eyes passed over Suzaku. Without looking away from him, she addressed the other woman (who was starting to regain color in her homey, dappled face). "And who is our guest this afternoon?"

"My name is Suzaku Kuruugi. I'm here to pick up Lelouch."

"I assume Miss Cee-Cee send you in her stead to escort him home. I am his psychiatrist, Yuki Kouzuki." The red-haired woman turned away, smiling at the blonde, "Please go into my records to find Mr. Lamperouge's case file and be prompt about it. We do not want to waste our guest's time."

As the other disappeared behind other glass doors connected to the waiting room, Ms. Kouzuki's smile tempered off, turning back on Suzaku.

"I can see her behavior made you feel uncomfortable, Mr. Kuruugi. Do forgive Miss Monica Kruszewski. She is very young and comes from a difficult family where tolerance and respect of Elevens was not very essential in her education. It took her some time to adjust to her position here."

Before the young man could respond to this, Monica returned with the file and gave a fleeting bow to her superior (who gave her another sunny, encouraging smile as if the woman were a slow child who required the show). "We usually do not allow _sudden_ substitutions during these circumstances, but I do have records on your reliability, Mr. Kuruugi. But I do have some concerns about Mr. Lamperouge that I'd like to go over with you."

"What kind of concerns?" Suzaku's eyebrows bunched together in confusion.

"Nothing too distressing, I can assure you. He has been in steady rehabilitation for two months, but Mr. Lamperouge is required to attend already prepared appointments here every week and can fill you in on those details himself. He is also required to be accompanied for the first several weeks if he wanders outside his home and without privacy for the first week even if it is the restroom. If he at any time requires a sedative, it must be written in the notebook I have already passed over to Miss Cee-Cee…"

Ms. Kouzuki poked her head inside the room she had originally emerged from and gestured to someone within.

"Oh, and I'd like to remind Mr. Lamperouge that he is still recovering from abdominal surgery and to warn him about his stretching exercises since he has already caused himself internal bleeding once before, and if he continues having to be reminded frequently about this…"

"I'm not an invalid…" Lelouch scowled at her as he exited, clutching tighter to the tattered red coat draped around his shoulders. "…so don't treat me like one…"

Suzaku swallowed hard at the sight of him.

Despite being held up in a monotonous hospital environment and eating less than satisfactory, Lelouch still had the ability to be as attractive as he had been months before the young soldier left for the intensive army training. Especially in those delicate, long-fingered hands. Those enormous, intelligent purple eyes —and it appeared that Lelouch had grown out his hair during his stay. His silky, black hair had stopped just short of his chin before. It was now messily pulled up at the back of his head by a black band, and if it were removed, Suzaku would have guessed that it would brush the tops of his less-than-broad shoulders.

"Mr. Kuruugi is here to take you home," the psychiatrist said, opening an arm towards Suzaku. Lelouch's eyes behind his framed glasses widened — but _only for a second_ — and then he avoided looking at the other man entirely, dropping his gaze to the floor.

"Does that mean I am free to take my leave?" Lelouch whispered, balling up those pale hands.

"As one would expect. Enjoy your freedom, Mr. Lamperouge."

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"Do you need anything to eat, Lelouch?"

"I'm not hungry at the moment."

And that was the extent of the conversation on the subway ride back to Ashford Academy's campus and as they crossed the threshold of the first floor of the Clubhouse. Within seconds, Lelouch dropped his belongings in the gap of the deserted hallway and then walked to the bathroom, closing it in Suzaku's face. The brown-haired boy stood outside, remembering what the psychiatrist had said, wondering if he should just knock first — and the door slid open with a soft _whoosh_.

"If I had known you were in a hurry, I would have used the bathroom upstairs," Lelouch said mildly, leaning languidly on the doorframe with one long arm over his head. He raked his eyes over Suzaku's street-clothed physique without much of a display of hiding his rapt attention.

"You are not supposed to be left alone for a week. Your psychiatrist told you that."

Lelouch did not answer him, grunting out something intelligible as he brushed past his companion. Suzaku caught his wrist without much effort. When the older man tried futilely to retch himself out of it, they stared hard at each other. And Suzaku's green eyes widened as Lelouch suddenly pressed him to the wall, crashing against him, dry and warm lips touching his earlobe. " _Make it worth my time then, Suzaku-kun..."_

Shutting away warning bells in his head, Suzaku smirked faintly into the light kiss they shared before his lover deepened it, scrabbling his fingertips into the back of Suzaku's white and blue jacket. Suzaku's hands journeyed low on Lelouch's hips, resting over the elastic band of the unflattering, hand-me-down plaid pants that he must have been given at the ward for his leaving day.

Lelouch moaned into their open-mouth kiss and accidentally pushed his tongue harshly on the inside of Suzaku's cheek, combing a hand into Suzaku's curls as he nudged his growing erection between the younger's legs. The warning bells only returned when Lelouch's breathing become faster and tighter, and as Suzaku felt him draw away.

"What is it, Lelouch? What's wrong?"

The darker-haired shook his head, resting his face into the crook of Suzaku's neck. "I'm fine." His breathing became more erratic. His delicate-fingered hands seeking further purchase into the other man's jacket as Lelouch whispered, "I just get this way because of the medicine they have me on."

Worried, Suzaku led him to a couch in the next room.

"Then you should sit down. I'll get you a bottle of water and something to eat." Lelouch rolled his eyes halfheartedly as he nearly sprinted for the kitchen. As Suzaku reached into the refrigerator, his green eyes caught of an open manila folder.

_Patient Lelouch Lamperouge…_

His tanned hands clasped instinctively on the speckled kitchen countertop.

Suzaku approached the top sheet of paper, swearing under his breath softly at those italicized words.

_Patient Lelouch Lamperouge is prohibited from any and all medication._

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	2. Chapter Two

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_Prohibited…from…_

Suzaku brushed aside that top piece of paper with all intents of investigating further into the matter, one of his hands still clenching the edge of the kitchen counter with enough pressure to bruise the inside of his hand. Lelouch's amused voice faded in from the den, "Did you get lost in there?" He paused from lifting another paper as he heard him, making a forced groan with his throat.

"No. Just looking for cups," Suzaku called back, closing the folder. _This…isn't right…_

Stretched out with his limbs relaxed on the burgundy two-seater, Lelouch tilted his head back over the armrest as he returned with two unopened bottles of water.

"Couldn't find any, then?"

"Any what?"

"You said you were looking for cups." At the disbelieving look he received, Suzaku smiled absently, shaking his head a little.

" _Right_. Sorry about that. I forgot where Sayoko used to put them," he said, still smiling, holding out a bottle to the older man who sat up to take it from him. As he did, Lelouch cringed, wrapping an arm around his abdomen. Suzaku's smile vanished.

"…you aren't on their medicine, are you?"

Lelouch's dark, amethyst eyes stared up at him, half-lidded. "…Do you think I've been lying to you?"

"I'd like to think you wouldn't."

"That didn't answer my question, Kuruugi." Lelouch added with a warning laced to his words, glaring back at Suzaku's silent — and _almost_ disappointed — frown, "I took Refrain and developed a physical dependency that causes me to become weak during the day. Sometimes unable to be physically active. Are you satisfied? It's called withdrawal. There is no cure for it. It just has to go away."

"Then why did you _lie_ to me and call it medicine?"

"Because I didn't want you to worry about me, you _idiot_!" The older man yelled up at him, his temper rising as the reddening color of his face, as his long fingers bit into the microfiber of the sofa beneath him. "I'm an adult and this is my problem to handle!" Suzaku didn't think he could make his frown go any deeper.

He chuckled darkly, pinning his shaking arms to his sides. "You keep forgetting that I'm an adult, too, Lelouch… and that I give a damn about what happens to you…"

"Oh, _don_ ' _t_ give me that foolish sentimentality…"

"Is that what you like to belittle my feelings to?" Suzaku asked softly, leaning down to cup the other man's face.

Lelouch flinched in its overly gentle grasp, despite the atmosphere between them — " _I love you_ ," his tan hands slid away from him as Suzaku walked away, not bothering to turn back as he headed for the staircase, "even if you are a stubborn _ass_."

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_The air inside the underground cave is dank and starts up a dull, seedy ache in the back of Lelouch's mouth. There are the echoes of gunshots. Up on a flat stone platform, a man in a black and indigo latex costume stares ahead blankly as a stream of blood rushes down his face._

_Another man, clad in an Britannian, white jumpsuit, lowers his gun. He is barely able to stifle a dismayed gasp with Lelouch as they gaze upon the shattered chess-piece mask bouncing off the floor deafeningly and then its grave, unmoved owner._

_As the halved mask continues its descent from the platform… it starts giving off a buzzing sound…_

Lelouch's cell phone went off by his head, vibrating steadily on his bedstand — his eyes shot open. And saw nothing but white.

Struggling with the notebook paper taped firmly to his forehead, Lelouch answered on the ninth buzz, "Hello?"

"And how is my _favorite_ insufferable ass feeling this morning?" Cee-Cee's voice asked chipper from the other phone line. _Too chipper_.

Lelouch had a sneaking, half-formed suspicion at that moment that she and Suzaku must have been talking. He got up from sitting on his mattress, ignoring the stomach pain from getting up too fast, and brushed his undone, long hair from his sleep-hazed eyes.

"I always thought I was more stubborn than insufferable…" He mumbled into the receiver, hearing her laugh breathily into hers. It was, truthfully, a comforting noise after those months of isolation at the ward. "How is Nunnally doing with the trip?"

"Excited to see you. If she was in the room right now she would have ripped my cell phone out of my hands." His heart thawed a little at that. "But she's not too lonely, her boyfriend has been calling her frequently to check up on her…" Cee-Cee purposely stretched the word ' _boooooooyfriend'_ and the ex-prince felt one of facial muscles tick up in irritation.

"Isn't he going a little overboard with this whole dating incident?"

" _Incident_? That's rich coming from you, isn't it?"

"You know what is also hilarious?" Lelouch said sardonically, "To wake up with a note taped to your forehead."

Cee-Cee hummed like she was extremely interested.

"…and what did this note say, exactly?" she inquired.

"I haven't looked yet. Let's see: _Gone into training for the day. Be back for dinner. Made egg salad for you in the fridge. I'll take full responsibility for anything that happens to you. Please feed the fish. Suzaku_. _"_

"Someone has to take care of that poor creature since its parents are always gone… and evidently, still fighting…"

"And when did I become a parental figure to a _goldfish_?" Lelouch huffed, grabbing his bath towel from the hanger off the back of his bathroom door. Gods, he felt disgusting. He was so exhausted returning to the Clubhouse that he had forgotten to eat and shower. It would explain why the room was spinning. "You _have_ been talking to that meathead, I see…"

"How very _manly_ of you, Lulu, to be pissy at a silly, little comment. Since there's so much trouble in paradise, why don't you be the good little wife to Suzie's daddy and do something nice so everyone can make up before Nunnally gets here? Because I'm _sure_ the first thing she wants to hear when she comes home is you two bitching each other out."

He gritted his teeth, holding back a snarl of loathing. Even if she was right.

 _Damned witch_.

"…what about making dinner for him when he comes back?"

"The 'wife' joke isn't funny anymore, Cee-Cee."

"I was being serious," she added, flatly. "Just… find a way to apologize. I know you don't want to fight with him for the rest of the night. Besides, you should cheer up. Your birthday is tomorrow and I've got a surprise for you."

"I don't know if I can take any _surprises_ this week…"

"You'll want this one, Lelouch." Cee-Cee assured cryptically before they hung up, "Trust me."

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It was around three in the afternoon when the doorbell rang. Lelouch would always remember where he had been when he heard it ( _leaning on a chair nearest the chrome kitchen sink, peering intensely at a recipe book_ ), and what he was wearing ( _white oxford shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a lemon yellow sweater vest, the black band holding his hair up)_ , and who had been ringing…

"Mr. Ashford."

From the concrete porch, the headmaster of Ashford Academy and his provider, smiled at him. He looked unnaturally skinny for his heavier bone structure, the weathered skin around his cheeks pouching at his chin. But his ultramarine-colored eyes — _the mirror image of his deceased granddaughter_ — lit up kindly at Lelouch's stunned expression.

"May I come in, Lelouch? I promise that I will not take up much of your time." The ex-professor stepped aside quickly to let him inside.

"S-Sure… it's your property after all, sir…"

Ashford rapped his cane to the carpet hallway smartly and then proceeded to wave it at the other (who stepped back from its path, alarmed) as he spoke reproaching, "Ah _ah_ , my dear boy _,_ from the moment we signed the paperwork… this place became your home."

"…With all due respect, I was only thirteen, sir."

"You were grown enough in my eyes with the life you had led previously." His blue, blue eyes squinted, his demeanor becoming solemn. "This is partly why I have come to you today. Ashford Academy is shutting down as of the end of the month. I have enough in my name to secure property for myself in the settlement, and for you and Nunnally to continue living fairly off. I would like to assist you both in the move and the renovation to the château in Japan's countryside. Surely, you remember it from many years ago…"

How couldn't he? Despite how ramshackle it had been on first appearance — with its moss-sewn graying bricks, and the leakage from the roofs in the left wing during rainstorms — it had been _beautiful_ as a haven from the people who would still hunt them for being of Marianne Lamperouge's blood.

Lelouch said numbly, thinking to himself that perhaps he was still in the kitchen and had dozed off by accident, " _Why_ are you helping us? We are so far indebted to you as it is… and I've sullied the reputation of your Academy …"

" _Tish tosh_ about the reputation of a school that will not be! You treated my students with respect and a nurturing heart." Ashford sniffed, a suspicious brightness rimming his eyes. "But what truly matters is that my grandbaby loved you and your sister deeply in her final moments of being in this world. I would disgrace her memory if I did not continue to assure your safety."

Something — his own guilt, self loathing — jammed hard into his diaphragm, making his words difficult to get out. "...if it wasn't for me, Milly still might—"

"You were not the cause of her suffering." Ashford's tone hardened so that Lelouch flushed embarrassed, "If anything, you alleviated it for a short time." The older man pressed his shaking hands into Lelouch's shoulders. "Listen to me, young man. I will wish you the best as I see you off. The preparations will take several days. Is this a satisfactory amount of time for you both?"

"Yes…" Lelouch replied, returning the grip to Ashford's shoulders, "but I still don't understand…"

Ashford laughed, letting him go and signaling the younger to follow.

"I have a bit of a soft spot for children. It came in handy for my profession." His once youthful and sandy-blond hair gleamed drab and darkened in the sunlight as he stepped back outside, rummaging his trouser pockets. "And you kids grew on me as well… so… ah, I almost forgot."

A small, ivory letter placed in Lelouch's hands. He curled his fingers around its whisper-smooth texture. "What is…?"

"Something Milly had left behind for you. I shall give you the rest of her belongings her will specified for you before your departure."

He barely heard the old man's farewell, the sounds of his heavy cane tapping on the walkway below, as he unwrapped the crisp envelope that smelled faintly of charred metal as it fell open…

_Lulu-_

_You were looking for this. Sorry for holding it ransom for this long. I hope you find its soulmate one day._

…a single, twisted earring fell into his palm.

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	3. Chapter Three

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In the past forty-eight hours, Suzaku had found himself slammed up against multiple walls repeatedly. Mostly _excruciatingly_. Mostly without his consent. At least this time, he found the experience had its merits.

His set of keys to the Clubhouse dropped clinking to the carpet as, without warning, Lelouch's hands entwined with his, the backs of tanned hands meeting the plaster-walls and trapped there. Lelouch moved in quickly to leave him with little personal space, his lips tasting faintly of a hearty Italian wine and of basil. Suzaku responded to the unusually _forceful_ greeting by opening his lips to the kiss, allowing Lelouch's tongue refuge to his mouth before needing to pull away for air.

"Not to push my luck or anything…" Suzaku panted, savoring the pleasant sensation of his lover's heated cheek to his neck, their lower bodies shifting together despite the awkward position to the hallway wall. "…but what was that for exactly…?"

Lelouch whispered, turning his face to meet Suzaku's stare, "I've been… in the wrong lately… and…"

He paused, horror-struck at the glaring, greenish-yellow bruise casing one side of his face.

"… _what in the hell happened to you_ …?"

Suzaku caught on immediately, clapping a free hand over it (albeit kindly).

"Well… instead of working at the lab with Lloyd, they put me on an assignment in the ghetto. Needless to say, it got rough," the young soldier said jokingly, one of his other hands running through his brown hair — despite how he was trying to keep the mood light and importance of his injury at a minimal, Lelouch could tell that he was still somewhat edgy.

_…what did they make you… an honorary Britannian… do that they couldn't bring themselves to do…?_

"They don't usually do this and when Miss Cecile found out, she had a fit—" He let out a hiss as Lelouch's fingertips traced the shape of the bruise with obvious concern. Suzaku moved away and added with a smiling grimace, "— _Hey_ , it's still tender!"

"You are a hopeless cause, do you realize that?"

"Not just a masochist then?" A threadlike smile peaked Lelouch's visage at that reply.

"You are that, too _…_ " His violet-colored eyes slit and he insisted, that haunted smile on his face intensifying into something too inexplicably dark of a feeling for his companion to understand. "Why else would you be here with someone like me—?" Lelouch's body became rigid as Suzaku's powerful, muscular arms tightened into an embrace around him; a fierce, mannish kiss to Lelouch's half-opened mouth.

"Reject me all you want, Lelouch, but trying to make me hate you will never work. If I am a hopeless cause then I want you to be the cause worth fighting for for me. I have you now, and I'm not letting you go now.

"Do you even know why I ended up in your classroom? I wasn't assigned there. You can check with the headmaster. I wanted to be in _your_ class because you were familiar to me, because you made me feel safe, made me feel good about myself. Why wouldn't I love you?"

Lelouch's ear he mumbled into tingled with that devoted breath — his own breathing quickening as Lelouch's heart pounded fervently in rhythm against the other man's chest. A smile hidden in Suzaku's burnt orange jacket. _Sentimental fool…_

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Ever the gentleman, Suzaku gave Lelouch complete control that evening. And dare say, _relished_ his vulnerable position underneath his straining, breathless, impaled lover.

Lelouch sucked in air through his teeth, perturbed as Suzaku's hand flitted upwards to fondle one of his nipples, "… _gods_ …you know I hate it when you do that…" He complained, frowning but flushing brilliantly — Suzaku's fingers were so warm…

Suzaku's mischievous features ( _hardened somewhat away from babyish but still soft_ ) peaked with a shrewd smile. His fingers traveled farther up, tugging at the black band in Lelouch's hair until his shoulder-length locks tumbled loose. "You don't seem to mind it enough to push me away…Lu…" He let out a short laugh as Lelouch cursed him in a garbled mutter. The waves of an oncoming orgasm stole away any proper words the older man had as he gripped the sheets beside his folded legs, arching his spine — as Suzaku gripped and held Lelouch's hips in place to keep him from falling backwards off his lap.

Lelouch had been obscenely tight that evening. Suzaku had almost been afraid to continue as the older man gasped through the initial penetration — though fully prepared with oil… could only make it halfway before the loathing tears stung in the corners of his violet eyes — and Lelouch paid no mind when he could finally settle himself down, making an loud, lustful sound in his throat before squirming in time with Suzaku's small thrusts into him.

Lelouch did not move from his position (even as the other man finished; Lelouch would never admit it but he was _eager_ to watch Suzaku's vivid, green eyes dance before closing them at the climax)— a little too stimulated and dazed to be grouchy about the mess. Drowsily, he reached for his companion, and Suzaku complied, Lelouch's head to his chest.

"The food was good tonight, sensei…" After a moment, Suzaku spoke up, whispering into Lelouch's left ear, " _The sex was better_ …"

"I'm not your sensei anymore," Lelouch said, face burning with embarrassment despite himself.

 _Damn pervert_.

"You will always be _my_ sensei…"

 

 

 

 

_A long, silver dangling earring — with a single, round diamond embedded in the center — glimmered in the sunlight through the drawing room's bay windows. Its twin hidden in a black mass of curls. His mother pushed her exposed earlobe out to him, her face lighting up. "Oh, Lelouch… for me? I love them, they are beautiful…"_

 

 

_Some of the rioters broke free from the crowd, stomping on a body in a ripped, floral pink dress, wincing underneath the men's boots. When he managed to get to Nunnally on the sooty lawn, her legs were already caked in blood and gore…_

 

 

_Milly — with her gorgeous, sandy-blonde hair plastered to her head and face from her shower — her blue, blue eyes red-rimmed and watering around the edges — held the Refrain injector against his arm, speaking as if he needed a reprimanding. "You'll get more use out of the dose if you inject it directly into your bloodstream…"_

 

_The rest of it — blurred out — the words on the chalkboard, crying lavender eyes — mudded itself — but his head was — in agony_

Lelouch remembered waking up — blind without his glasses, his head and the muscles on the back of his neck throbbing, and unable to get enough oxygen in his lungs as great sobs racked his body. He groped in the dark for something to _clutch_ to himself, to know he was out of harm's wa _y_. His beloved savior, smelling of pleasant musk and citrus shampoo, gathered him naked into their arms, as soothing words and kisses were murmured into his hairline.

"Bed bugs…bed bugs… _why_?" Lelouch whimpered into his curled hands, against Suzaku, "What am I remembering?"

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"They were supposed to be gone…"

Suzaku answered that statement with a long, tired sigh. He propped an elbow on the kitchen countertop, trying to look sympathetic for his agitated lover. "They are dreams, Lelouch. You can't control when they happen," he said.

"Not these ones…" Lelouch insisted, keeping a stiff rein on the handle of his porcelain coffee cup. Suzaku continued to eye him worriedly, wondering vaguely if he might throw a tantrum, "I would _know_ … they stopped after I was rehabilitated…"

"Would you want to go on medication to get rid of them?"

"The institute wouldn't let me even if I asked…" The older man slumped over the same countertop. "I'm not qualified." His pants pocket began to vibrate. Lelouch sat up, flipping his cell phone open, "Hello?"

On the other line, CC told him, informatively, " _Look out the living room window, Lulu."_

When he stepped out of the kitchen, Lelouch dropped everything to rush out the front door. Down the walkway, a cinnamon-skinned stranger in an open-collar, maroon-colored shirt looked up at him with a duffel bag in hand. Lelouch felt all the wind leave him the moment his mind processed that the man had piercing, orange eyes.

"…Jeremiah?"

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	4. Chapter Four

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"You can't be…"

Cautiously, as if approaching a ghost, Lelouch took a step down the walkway towards the cinnamon-skinned man. His entire world was shrinking around him.

Jeremiah chuckled heartily at his astonishment, bending forward into a brief bow. "It's good to see you again, my Prince." As if his honeyed voice had broken the trance, Lelouch felt himself propel forward as he closed the space to desperately embraced the other man (—who reciprocated the indulgent action, who felt his own heart gladden by the dear feel of the younger's affection).

Suzaku stood at the top of the concrete stairs to observe, his eyebrows wrinkling together as he processed what was happening. He cradled Lelouch's fallen phone with a blinking text message: _YOU'RE WELCOME._

"Don't you know what happened to the cat who frowned too much?"

From behind him, Cee-Cee twirled her jiggling house keys from around her middle finger. He could see from over her shoulder that the back's screen door was ajar.

"Cats don't frown."

"They also don't read the text messages on other people's phones." She said with a matter-of-fact tone, smiling slowly, "Are you jealous, Suzaku Kuruugi?" At his silence, the green-haired woman made a musing sound with closed lips, touching them with her fingertips. "Nunnally probably needs help packing up the rest of her things for the move to the countryside. Why don't we let those two have some time alone to bond?" As if steer him in the right direction, she tugged at the opaled sleeve button of his shirt lightly.

With a last silent glance back out out the front door, Suzaku followed her upstairs to the second floor.

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"Must we leave so soon?" In her wheelchair, Nunnally complained with her lower lip protruding in a cute pout as Suzaku and Cee-Cee gave her news about the château. "The ride into Tokyo was terribly _dull_."

"We're going through the countryside this time. We have no choice." Tawny-colored eyes softened on the small, blind girl. "It would be most appreciated if you would bear with the plans already made."

"Does this mean I can't visit Rivalz anymore?"

At her downcast expression, Cee-Cee patted her head like she was a beseeching pet. "It's not a forever circumstance. Lelouch says that for now it's not safe. Besides, Jeremiah is going to be escorting all of us tomorrow morning out there." Nunnally's features momentarily brightened at the familiar name.

"Is Sir Jeremiah really here? Where is he?"

 _Sir_ …?

"He's with Lelouch at the moment." Cee-Cee gave Suzaku an unreadable sideways look. "Why don't you go say hello, Nu?" When she left the bedroom, the braided woman shut the door, her back to Suzaku as she spoke up again, "You'll give yourself wrinkles from all of this worrying. What was once in the past between them will stay in the past…"

"What do you mean … he and Lelouch _have_ history?"

Emerald eyes darkened, _hurt_.

Cee-Cee tossed her pale green French braid over her shoulder, turning back to him with not her queer, toothy smile — but a slight grimace.

"And here I was… under the impression that the insecure one to the relationship was Lulu…" She sighed, a troubled luster in her luminous eyes, "If I cannot assure you at all, the only way for you to understand is to breach the subject yourself. I would advise you to step with discretion though. Lelouch remembers little of his past living at the palace."

Finally sick of the cryptic act, Suzaku came forward to grasp her upper arm. And she let him.

"Who is he—?" His words were snatched from his throat as his surroundings bled away to white…

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* * *

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_The smell of burning flesh clings still to my nostrils. My hands are paler than I remember, and rough with permanent calluses in my palms... before the Change... A sooty, snarled head nestles to my heaving chest, reining me from following the traitors carrying away Marianne's scorched, hairless corpse. I shut my trembling eyes, holding the child's face closer…_

_The child mumbles in his stupor, slipping his arms around my neck. I soothe him with a low whisper._

_From our hiding place, I stare at Jeremiah forcing himself to wade through the faces of panic — the firelight casting off Aries Palace painting shadows on him. His pale blue imperial guard uniform — much like Lelouch's own — makes him glow amongst the sea of dark silhouettes fading._

_He forces his way to us and checks to see if anyone had seen him. He kneels down with us in the dirt. I know he is impatient to examine Lelouch for injuries. And we know that there is no time to waste on that._

_"I can't find Nunnally." His orange-hued eyes glance up dismayed at the towering, burning structure. "She couldn't be…" It sounds as if he is trying to convince himself of an unthinkable thought._

_"I promised to take care of Lelouch." When the boy in my arms whimpers, I stroke his hair, murmuring, "And that is all."_

_He slams a discolored, gloved fist into the ground, growling, "You would leave her to face this? Are you listening to yourself?"_

_"If it endangers her son, I cannot make that risk, Jeremiah."_

_"She's Marianne's child as well!" Something within the palace explodes deafeningly, shattering the window above us._

_Lelouch jolts, a panicked animal, as reality comes back to him, and charges from my arms. It didn't take us long to find him. He stands with his childish eyes widen, looking down on the unconscious form of Nunnally, her legs butchered, and her blackened eyelids swelling over. Jeremiah finds two bedsheets hanging from the garden_ — _one to wrap her up and the other to wrap up Lelouch when he faints onto the lawn._

_Despite what we are opposing in aiding these children, he smiles kindly at me, with Nunnally's blood staining the sheet and his front. The glaring sweat draping to his soft, fanning hair and his brow is beautiful._

_"Take him to the Ashford's. They will guarantee his safety."_

_"I want you to fully comprehend this situation," I murmur. "If you are caught… you'll lose not only your military rank, but also your life."_

_"I was a part of Lady Marianne's personal guard… I am as good as dead now…" He leans forward to kiss me. And I let him._

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* * *

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Suzaku's hand fell away from her bare, cold skin.

The world bled back to the color of the ugly yellow of Nunnally's bedroom walls and the hanging curtains. Of Cee-Cee's pale, unsinged green bangs touching her nose. She smiled to him, as if he had not invaded her memories, as if she did not at the least bit enjoy the karmic outcome as Suzaku took his pounding head into his hands and willed back the sudden urge to throw up on his sneakers.

"Go wish Lelouch a happy birthday." Her velvety voice adds to the unbearable pressure to his cranium, "He only turns twenty-one once."

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Lelouch yawned into one of his hands, propping up one of his study's books in his lap. Between his concentrated reading haze, there were the sounds of his shower running… and a disconcerting image of Suzaku's face before he disappeared into it…

Suzaku's face had been… _painfully_ _heavy_ …

Since that afternoon, Suzaku had been quieter. Paler. And had a habit of drumming his spoon against his fingers at dinner.

Everyone else seemed normal. Sayoko helped Nunnally present souvenirs from the places outside the settlement she journeyed to for his birthday gifts; the little girl kissed his cheek upon doing so. Jeremiah apologized honestly for letting it escape his memory. Cee-Cee insisted that he open her gift somewhere in private (to which he gave the striped bow-box a wary scrutiny). The shower switched off. Suzaku emerged from the steam, fluffy towel wrapped loosely to his waist.

Lelouch's eyes lingered over his book on the taut muscles of his stomach and chest.

"Are you sleeping with me tonight?" he asked, managing to keep his voice at nonchalance (despite the sizable erection he was quickly gaining as Suzaku disposed of the towel, stretching down naked for underwear in a random dresser drawer).

"I don't have to if you feel uncomfortable." Lelouch gave a hollow laugh at that comment. Suzaku bristled somewhat. "What is so funny?" he asked.

"What is your problem today, Suzaku? You've barely said a word to me since morning."

"You seemed pretty okay with it when you had plenty to say to Jeremiah." Lelouch stared dumbfounded as Suzaku said this crossly, already slipped into a pair of gray boxers.

"What have you got against Jeremiah? You don't know him."

"I'm _jealous_ , Lelouch." The green-eyed man admitted, emphasizing his point by opening his hands mockingly, "Do you get it now?"

"…of Jeremiah and I?" Lelouch saw that he was not joking and rubbed a temple in exasperation, shutting his book. "Listen to me, I was very young. I never lied to you about being a virgin. I admired him. Nothing more. Or do you not believe me?"

Suzaku left his immediate answer with a firm kiss to his lover's lips. He noticed that Lelouch leaned back to allow him more room to climb on top, his thin mouth curling up satisfied as their lips opened a little. "I owe you a birthday present," Suzaku confessed flushed against Lelouch's soft mouth, his face warming with a mixture of embarrassment and arousal. His back to the mattress, Lelouch pushed his greedy erection to Suzaku's with a sharp thrust of his hips.

"I know a way you can make it up to me."

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	5. Chapter Five

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_Purple to red. Red to orange. Purple to orange. Gold to red. Those waves of color-morphing lights blinded him. They dimmed, dimmed, as the figures of a man and a woman became clearer on and near the winding, stone pillars that reached towards the heavens. Every part of his body was clenching, his throat, his legs, the muscles in his lower jaw. The portly man in front of him dipped the woman back as those washes of light lifted her lime-green bangs from her tattooed forehead, her eyes bulging in astonishment._

_And then the ground beneath the woman broke apart, and she was falling with the crumbling stones in golden-clouded sky, dazed, breathless as her cloud-golden eyes met his eyes. And he yelled for her…_

_…a door slammed…?.?..._

Lelouch awoke violently, his body jolting upward into a sitting position the same time Suzaku entered, giving a glare at the bedroom door. "Damn. I'm sorry, Lelouch. I didn't think it would be that loud." He smiled cheerfully at his lover, unaware of how his body still clenched up, his long, pale hands digging into his blankets without mercy. "I thought I'd try to bring you something to eat."

The brunet carefully maneuvered over some taped up, cardboard boxes with the full breakfast tray in his hands. He placed it in Lelouch's lap as the older pulled his sweat-soaked pajama collar from his neck. Suzaku hoisted up some of the boxes from the floor and headed out the doorway silently for the staircase. When he left, Lelouch quickly exchanged his clothes for fresh one — a textured white shirt and loose-fitting jeans. He reached for the sticky, maple-covered toast. Lelouch suddenly was feeling ravaged of tastes. His mouth tingled happily for the sweetness in his mouth.

"I almost thought you were going to sleep for the rest of..." Suzaku explained, stepping back into view, and stared as Lelouch paused from eating, watching his green-eyed stare with mild confusion.

"What's the…?" Suzaku cut him off, shifting the breakfast tray to an open space on the mattress before invading his lover's personal space, lowering to press himself nose-to-nose with him. When Lelouch tried to inch away halfheartedly, protesting, the soldier touched his lips to Lelouch's maple-smeared bottom lip. Suzaku's teeth clamped down rudely on the sweetly-flavored flesh, reddening it with his ministrations. Those devilish lips and teeth reminded Lelouch of all the… _phenomenal_ things they had done the evening before… This was bad. The molested lip's owner moaned, huskily. He was going to get a hard-on before Suzaku moved away from his lap.

"Sorry..." Suzaku pulled back a little, sounding much too amused to be apologetic. "I couldn't resist, sensei."

"How long are you going to insist upon the 'sensei' bit, Suzaku?"

He answered the question by leaning into Lelouch's ear canal, savoring it in his excitement in the way of the older man squeaked cutely when Suzaku's hand made a circular motion around the fabric containing Lelouch's half-grown erection. "Until it stops turning you on."

Suzaku jumped out of the way, offending hand stretched up as Lelouch made a motion to smack him away.

That carefree smile on Suzaku's tan face... it reminded him of when he was still a senior in high school; a baby-faced troublemaker; still just a boy and still untainted by the army... and that first kiss. The moments before the mischievous and flushing teenager had pulled the fire alarm.

It seemed forever ago.

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Small bundles of pinkish-white _momo_ and Alice-blue hydrangea flowers blossomed in the bushes by the Clubhouse's back veranda. Multicolored pedals spiraled down to make silk beds for the soil underneath the bush. Spiketails dangled like delicate necklace chains down from the shrubs surrounded by the shocking white clumps of the _snow willows_.

"The flowers in Japan are beautiful," Jeremiah commented to Lelouch as he joined him by the polished wood railing, leaning with arms crossed. The afternoon sun beat down on them with a slow, purposeful swelter. "They are perhaps more so than the homeland's."

"Not really," Lelouch mused, taking a deep breath of the powerful fragrance. "Mother's garden was more beautiful than this. She raised the healthiest Black Eye Susan's and Queen Anne's lace on that side of the continent. I remember the primroses and the snapdragons and blue flax during summer she would pick for the vase on her dinner table in the cottage."

"Do you?" Jeremiah seemed to visibly perk up at this, his orange eyes relieved.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Cee-Cee mentioned that your memories were scattered still." The cinnamon-skinned man turned back to the flowers and moodily dusted off his navy-shirt lapel. "Even your memories of myself."

Lelouch held back an absurd laugh as if the possibility were…well, _absurd_ to him.

"I can't remember a lot. This is true. But I would never forget about how much you meant to me as a child," he assured him, entertained that Jeremiah had still a part of his humbled spirit around him. He returned the other man's lightsome smile when it surfaced itself.

"This Kuruugi boy you have living with you… he's related to Genbu, correct? Genbu was very important man to the Japanese people…" Jeremiah said suspiciously, the smile fading into a stern look — the protective figure Lelouch knew from long ago coming into his tone, "Is this boy special to you?"

Lelouch made a long face, rubbing his hands against it, "Has Cee-Cee been running her mouth again?"

"You know her," Jeremiah agreed, chuckling at the amount of curious truth in his statement. "Do you mind if I ask what your relationship is with him?"

"I will not hide the fact that we share a special relationship. Suzaku means very much to me." Lelouch's throat dried as if he was nervous but... he knew he was not. "He always was. I would be a less stable person right now if Suzaku had not given me his support."

"...Are you two lovers then?"

An explosion of red streaked Lelouch's cheeks and neck. His mouth dropped. "Wa… _wha_..?"

"Cee-Cee has been 'running her mouth again' as you so quaintly put it. Do not permit me an answer if you are uncomfortable, your Highness. I merely wished to see that adorable, frazzled expression I have not seen for so long." _(HE was TEASING him!)_ Unlike Suzaku, Jeremiah did not avoid the smack on his arm.

"You haven't changed it seems," Lelouch grumbled noisily as the other man appeared pleased at the effects of his good-humored badgering. "I think I am in love with him." The ex-prince gave him a sideways look as he admitted it (internally amazed that he had spoken the words he had long since avoided to Suzaku), trying to gauge his reaction, "…Do you disapprove of this?"

Jeremiah remained quiet for a moment. A pale-watery flower pedal spun gracefully into his open palm. Both men smiled before he spoke an honest "No."

" _Lads_!"

Rounding the side hedges of the property, a frantic Ashford hobbled over to them, looking particularly disheveled in his clothing and with a spot of blood on his chin. Jeremiah immediately jumped over the railing to aid him up the veranda steps as Lelouch waited at the top of them. The elderly man hooked onto Lelouch, panting, a veined hand trembling on his cane, "...You must leave immediately."

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"Cee-Cee, you are so good at this!" Nunnally chirped, tracing the magenta-and-lavender paper crane in her lap with both of her hands. She eagerly handed it to Suzaku on the low bar-stool for him to examine. He received it with an interested eye. Indeed, it was magnificently crafted with its crisped, dual-colored edges.

The woman with her long, green hair unraveling from the back of her head gave her a quietly-spoken _thank you_. She stood by the kitchen window overlooking the front of the Clubhouse's stone-walkway, peering out with a sudden furrow in her brow, "Hey, Suzaku?" she murmured.

"Yeah?"

"Were we expecting visitors?"

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	6. Chapter Six

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"You must leave immediately..."

Lelouch stared, disbelieving and motionless even as a rumpled Ashford seized him; a fistful of versicolored polo-collar; he shook him hard enough to rattle his neck and head. "Did you hear me, boy? I said _immediately_!" the older gentleman shouted.

Jeremiah slowly worked the Ashford's veined fingers from strangling Lelouch any further. "Please... what happened?"

"They're onto us," Ashford said with his words gnashing through his teeth. This time, he latched onto the other man for support, knees quaking, his cane rolling forgotten on the steps. "Quickly now, lad... before it is too late for all of us..."

A flash of something remarkable — … _terror_? _…could it_? — in Jeremiah's eyes. "You…" He turned to Lelouch, his voice hardening, urgent, "Round everyone up in the Clubhouse now. Have Sayoko pack Nunnally's things."

"She just finished. We saw them coming," Cee-Cee said blandly from the opened screen door — an slender, girlish arm gripping an exposed shoulder and her loosened, green hair streaming behind her as she rested her back to the mesh screen to face them.

"Cee-Cee…?" Lelouch heard himself say with numbed lips. Her earnest, tawny-gold eyes flicked to him.

"They're already at the front door, by the way…" She shrugged unaffected at the mild banging; the jingling of the deadbolt — Lelouch had barely heard it from the beginning of Ashford's appearance by the veranda — as that banging increased to thunderous as multiple persons behind the door yelled; the roar dulled behind the security of wood and steel.

Cee-Cee added, her straight hair screening her face from view, "Whoever… ' _t_ _hey'_ are…"

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He grew to hate the forevermore, rhythmic jolt of carriage wheels beneath him. A sensation that seemed to carry for hours as the sun grew more distant in the mountainous horizon — and how it made his muscles strain to themselves and his eyes roll sleepily. The agitation in Lelouch's body made him feel more fully awake.

"Would you care to explain what the _HELL_ just happened back there?"

He couldn't afford to let the current circumstances go lightly. A dozing Suzaku wrinkled his nose, shifting his head from Lelouch's right shoulder.

"Where would you like me to start, your Highness?" The one driving the carriage, Jeremiah, gave him a troubled backwards glance. Lelouch continued glaring at the driver — with his fluttering, ballooning maroon shirt; his sweating, dark neck despite the rushing cool wind as the horses dashed faster down the mountain path to their eventual destination.

"How did Ashford know to inform me? How someone who was once Marianne's soldier trusted to become a part of the highest surveillance branch of the Britannian Imperial Army and how long I have been undercover there to aid you? Or how I knew that both you and Nunnally were alive and where to contact Cee-Cee to reach you? It's all to do with the night the Britannian Imperial Family, _your family,_ was slaughtered. Did you ever wonder why Schneizel and Clovis' bodies were never identified in the wreckage?"

Jeremiah paused when Cee-Cee got up from her creaking seat. "Where they not…?" she began, a frown twisting her mouth.

"Yes, exactly. Because they weren't at Aries Palace that evening. They were arrested and held up in the securest prison the Tokyo settlement had to offer until it was all over. And now they are set on hunting you, any breath that you two are alive."

Lelouch slammed his fist against the curtained carriage window near his head, startling Nunnally who cried out sharply and was consoled quietly by Sayoko.

" _HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE_!-?-" He shook away Suzaku's hand reaching for his shoulder.

"Clovis la Britannia and Schneizel el Britannia let themselves be imprisoned by the rebellion leaders… in exchange for their lives was your entire family." Orange eyes narrowed with recollection, empty, unseen by the others behind him. "They continue to pull the strings of this current government even now, shedding blood and gathering followers wherever is needed to see to it that their wishes are fulfilled." He flicked the reins, clearing his throat. "Or so it is rumored."

Cee-Cee asked, "How much of this is really true?"

"...All of it," he said, truthfully. A long silence followed from the other passengers. "Nowhere is safe anymore for you."

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" _I have done all that I can to arrange you and your sister's safety to the château. It is not on government record_."

You shouldn't have… for us…

" _No… it won't be possible. I'm afraid I won't be able to reach you by letter, my boy_ …"

Yes… that's because… the whispered, the great and awful " _They'_ " won't allow you to live long enough for one to be sent…

" _There's no more time._ _Milly would have wanted it this way…"_

…I beg your pardon, sir, but, Milly is still dead. Her opinion matters little now.

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Come a thundering morning; come waking to the planked floor of the cramped carriage from a (thankfully) dreamless, dark sleep for one particular ex-addict; the château laid before them, thriving in the veil of dewdrop trees.

The renovations were not an empty promise. The few workers and the few times spent had fixed the holes in the roofing and any in the bedrooms; the plumbing and the electricity in several rooms running like new as the group of travelers would discover from exploring. Lelouch could still see where the laced, grayish moldings on the crumbled, ashlars bricks glistened. For a moment it all swimmed before his eyes and he clapped a palm to his forehead, closing the fuzz and nostalgia from his senses.

"It's different than what I imagined it was."

Lelouch snorted, remaining in place as he replied to Suzaku's offhanded comment, "What were you expecting? Polished marble? Fancy servants with silver plated trays of riches waiting for us when we arrived?"

"Sarcasm gives the youth ugly wrinkles." Cee-Cee clucked her tongue at him, wheeling a giggling Nunnally up beside them.

Lelouch reopened his eyes. He and Suzaku's goldfish circled gracefully, pensively in his glass bowl in Nunnally's lap.

Suzaku smiled, dropping to his knees to examine the finned creature. "You managed to get Suzie out. I'm glad," he breathed.

The woman gave Lelouch a wary scrutiny, rolling Nunnally away, muttering, "…You two are the worst parents ever," and left Suzaku on his knees with a semi-confused expression on his tanned face and the other man scowling darkly at the obvious jib.

"Wonder what that was…" The green-eyed man shrugged it off, rising to his feet. "…Do you mind if I go on ahead with them?"

"Suzaku, I don't want you to stay here."

"… _What_ —?"

Lelouch moved forward quickly to silence him, tangling his delicate, pale fingers in soft, brown locks and pulling Suzaku's ear to his mouth, his cheek to the younger's temple. He heard him draw in a half-excited breath. "The military will suspect you if you linger here for too long. Nunnally and I will have enough protection." Purple eyes slipped shut, calmly, as those fingers stroked his lover's hair in small swirls. "I'm not dragging you in any further into this mess. You're going back to the settlement tomorrow morning."

"You will have to physically knock me out yourself," said Suzaku, with a humorless edge of a laugh in his voice, refusing to lean into the mindful caresses to his head, "And, no offense, but I think I can take you easily in a fight."

To prove his point, the brunet anticipated Lelouch's grasp for his upper arm and swung them around, pinning both of Lelouch's hands behind him and knocking one of Lelouch's knees to force him down in front of him. At the noise of Lelouch's immediate distress, Suzaku let go, breathing hard, balling up his fists and retreating for the château's entrance.

And the thundering morning dissolved into a rainy world.

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It came down with a fury that shrieked against the château's walls — an inky and stonewalled fury in the pit of Suzaku's gut — and drummed against the clerestory windows above the salon room. "Where is Big Brother?" Nunnally wheeled from the corridor, an light brown eyebrow tilting in worry. "Has anyone seen him?"

Cee-Cee slowly spun on her naked heels in the center of the furniture-less concert salon, the beaded hem of her gold and black cocktail dress rounding out around her. She came to a halt upon seeing the smaller girl and said from across the room, her deepened, womanly voice amplified against bare walls, "He's probably still taking a hot shower, Nunnally. I haven't seen him since. Can't even stand a little bit of dirt getting under his fingernails. It will be a miracle if he survives the weekend."

"But I've checked all the bathrooms. I thought he would be there, too."

"Jeremiah is doing a sweep of the grounds. I'll get him to—"

"I'll look for him." Cee-Cee hesitated, a shrewd smirk perking up the corners of her mouth as Suzaku spoke from his sitting position nearby a window.

"How... _prompt_ of you. Thank you, Suzaku." Nunnally echoed Cee-Cee's statement with a silent, cheerful smile, disappearing from the doorway with Sayoko and the woman took her opportunity, folding her arms on the jut of Suzaku's shoulder. "I'd try the shack up the hill before straying too far into the woods." She whispered, poking a fingernail at a run in his shirt, her smile stretching, "I'll cover you for tonight. Don't worry about getting the both of yourselves back before sunset."

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His long, black hair dripped, cemented to his face as Lelouch stumbled into the shelter of the shack. The squeaking, withered wood-door slammed behind him as the wind howled. An equally dripping Suzaku had made himself cozy, cross-legged to the floor, gazing at him as he entered and nodding in his direction.

"I thought I'd wait here…"

"Cee-Cee told you where I was."

Suzaku smiled innocently, handsomely. "So why here?" he asked.

"This was the place Nunnally and I grew up. Whenever we felt trapped, afraid, we would come here. Nunnally didn't even mind the spiders." Lelouch walked over to him, making wet, shining paths on the rotting floorboards. Suzaku's green eyes traveled over his drenched appearance.

"Where'd your hair band go?"

"Lost it somewhere. Back there." The older man's body shivered, rivets of remaining water in his hair falling down his cheeks. "Like I was saying earlier… it's better… that we don't see each other for now. We'll make a safe point later. Jeremiah can set it up—" His mumbling trailed off when Suzaku's hand touched his.

"I'm not saying goodbye to you, you know. I'm not letting your selfishness win."

Lelouch's eyelashes clumped together as his eyes narrowed skeptically. "What is that suppose mean?" he accused.

"You're not shoving away your feelings to save my life. It doesn't work that way. I'll go on one condition."

"What condition?"

Suzaku made a groaning noise with his throat, facing the other man as he stood up and brushed a stubborn, damp strand of curl from his brow. "There's no point in asking me that. You know the answer already." His eyes half-lidded. Lelouch motioned dumbstruck at him, as if he were speaking an entirely different language.

"…W-Why are you so _infuriating_?"

"I don't know. What is it about me that gets under your skin?"

" _I DON'T KNOW_!" Lelouch shouted at the impassive, gorgeously wet figure in front of him, bunching his hands into his hair.

"Come on, Lelouch… there has to be a reason…"

"I… _don't_ —"

"Why do you want me to leave this place? What is the real excuse?"

"So you don't die, you idiot! There's no logical reason for you to be caught up in this—!" At Suzaku's patient, green, focused gaze — something rigid and frail in Lelouch's system snapped completely. "Because if the person I love _dies_ , what the fuck do I do with myself? Am I supposed to mourn you? _Follow_ after you? I'm not choosing and you are not putting me on the spot right now!"

He clung to Suzaku, furious and sobbing dry-eyed, as arms enclosed around him. Suzaku kissed the side of his reddening face. "No, no, you don't have to. It's okay… _shhh_ … I'll go. I'll go tomorrow for you. Don't get upset…" He murmured affectionately into the slick clumps of Lelouch's hair, rocking him, "I'm so sorry, Lu. I just needed to hear you say it."

" _I hate you… sometimes_ …" came an irritated, gulping muffle.

Suzaku said with a teasing grin, running his hands up to Lelouch's neck and cupping. "As long as you are thinking about me, I guess…" He gently placed his closed lips on the space between Lelouch's eyebrows, the tip of his cool nose, and then to his lips. His tongue ran the crease of Lelouch's mouth, happily overtaking the hot and pleasantly moist cavity when the other opened his mouth to it.

" _Mmmmh_." Lelouch gripped the heavy material of Suzaku's white button-up as the brunet traced his mouth down the curve of his shoulder, holding back a shudder.

"Stay with me like this... for a moment longer..." The words formed, like tickling, against his skin and guided Suzaku's mouth back to his, exchanging shameless, sucking kisses that were needful and resentful. A familiar weight; _heaviness_ ; overtook Lelouch's body as the compassionate man in his arms opened him, _all of him; loved him_ ; the strings of his black hair sticking to the wood-boards of the shack as the two men moved together, _into each other; clumsy; clawing._

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	7. Chapter Seven

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A sudden, sharp cry of release. Not loud enough to be heard over lonely sounds of one of the military base's shower system working.

The strings of pearly, translucent fluids washed from his tanned skin and melted; mingled into the soapy water as he shakily rinsed himself clean.

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_(I miss you. Just don't do anything stupid, Suzaku.)_

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"Girlfriend sent you a letter, Kuruugi?"

The young, honorary soldier glanced up at his uniformed, blue-eyed roommate towering over him at his desk, his university books tucked under one of his arms. Suzaku smoothed his palms over the letter's contents to hide them from plain view. "Sort of," he replied, half-smiling.

His roommate shrugged, picking up his orange-brown jacket from the closet door-hook, and turned doubtfully back to Suzaku. "You know, the rest of the guys don't say anything but…" Suzaku met his somewhat embarrassingly awed gaze. "…you have guts, man. I have never seen a guy take as much crap as you do with the superior officers. And you don't seem messed up by it at all."

The brunet murmured an uncomfortable _thank you_ before shifting back into his original position in his desk chair, still feeling his roommate's eyes burn still into the back of his skull. His bloodied-bandaged hands curled, trembling into themselves.

"That girl of yours must hate this place for everything that's happened to you."

"More than you can imagine," Suzaku lied, raising his voice to a perfunctory, gladsome tone. "Have a good night."

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.

He felt the hidden electrical cords in the inside cushioning of the training suit start to pressurize, expanding against the soft parts of his body.

"Suzaku, you need to slow your breathing and pull back," Cecile said sternly, glancing between him on the ground floor and the multiple screens at the elevated projection counter. The screens went from a mild blue color to flashing red abd blinking warningly: _OVERRIDE SYSTEM CODE_. "—what are you doing? Pull back now!" By then, he had collapsed to his side, quivering as if he was experiencing a fit.

" _Hwat_?" Lloyd shouted as the panicked, indigo-haired woman raced down the staircase. "What is this? What is happening to my beloved research? What the devil is wrong with Suzaku?" Cecile removed the boy's helmet and unzipped the front part of the lead-heavy jumpsuit to check him over.

After a brief moment, she looked back up at her boss on the platform, relieved.

"...Just overworked himself, Lloyd."

"Not possible," the bespectacled man stated, leaning to check the readings again and swore under his breath, stomping his foot.

At Suzaku's muttered _sorry_ , she touched his sweaty hair, maternally. "You haven't eaten all day, have you?" she asked.

"We have a very important audience to arrive here shortly, no, _less than shortly_ , and my best test subject is falling over because he is _hungry_ …?" A childish pout formed over Lloyd's expression as he came down the staircase and stooped over his female assistant, "Cecile, fiiiix it~."

She let out an exasperated sigh, patting Suzaku's shoulder as he sat up with some difficulty.

"Let me find something for you at the cafeteria before Lloyd throws a tantrum."

Not long after she departed the training unit, a swarm of Imperial guards make their way into the testing area. From the center of the group are the two people Suzaku least wanted to interact with.

Clovis stepped around the technical equipment, examining everything under his nose. His irritated attitude vastly contrasted to his media persona everyone in Britannia knew so well… charming and benevolent… to those who _deserved_ the right for it. On the other hand, Schneizel walked over to his boss, shaking his hand with all aspects of professionalism glinting in his stainless teeth.

Lloyd however tinged a slight green. "You arrived so early…" he mumbled.

"Our schedules are running tighter than we expected." Schneizel gave a knowing look to his brother who snickered behind his silk, gloved hand. "Is there a problem?"

Lloyd recovered, clearing his throat with a "No, not at all, your Excellencies. As I discussed with you over the last video transmission, we are working on prototypes of piloting humanoid machines capable of processing the human intelligence of the pilot. In fact, I have with me today the person who ranked the highest in superior output." He gestured limply to Suzaku who still had his face lowered away.

Both members of the lost Imperial family had apparently not noticed him before making their grand entrance.

"An _Eleven_ soldier?" Clovis wrinkled his thin nose in disgust.

Schneizel hovered over Suzaku, seemingly fascinated, and asked for his name. When he did not respond, Clovis grabbed him by the top of his curled hair, and yanked fiercely, hissing at him, "Lift your eyes, honorary filth, when my distinguished brother addresses you. Now, what is your name?"

The green-eyed boy did not speak but did darkly meet Schneizel's analyzing stare.

"Ah," the older man laughed."I indeed know that look all too well. A dear little brother of mine used that look on me many times during our childhood. It is a shame that Lelouch VI Britannia's child-like arrogance led to his downfall." Clovis's echoing laugh silenced itself when the boy on the floor lunged forward, growling, caught in the guards' arms before landing any hits. A bang sounded from the doorway and Cecile stared on horrified at the escalating scene, the tray of Suzaku's lunch spilling.

"Lloyd, do you always employ criminals to do your dirty work?" Schneizel asked, pleasantly interested, as the young soldier fought in his capture, and one of the guards injected the back of his neck with muscle relaxant. "Detain him. I think I found the missing link I have been searching for." Unable to do anything but roll his head, Suzaku felt his feet drag limply behind.

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Nunnally made him lean forward that morning to kiss her forehead. She squealed as he blew a raspberry there.

"Oh, Lelouch, I'm not five anymore!" She insisted — her little, dove-like features puffed out in her irritation but still illuminated prettily despite it. Even chiding him, she resembled a small angel. He smiled amused, saying nothing and tucking a long, curling strand of light brown behind her ear.

"…I heard you last night in your sleep. You were calling out for Mother," Nunnally said, bashful, worried.

Lelouch did not slip his cheerful voice, a voice exclusively for her, and pushed up the bridge of his black-rimmed glasses, "What were you doing up?"

"Sayoko and I were looking for the bathroom." She gripped his hands so anxiously, a crease forming in the center of where her eyebrows aligned. "Are you mad at me, brother?" He touched the tip of his index finger to the crease, as if trying to convince it to seek another place to rest — not somewhere it didn't belong.

"I could never be mad at you." He added teasingly, poking her side with the same finger gently, "Not for very long away."

"Are you mad at Suzaku?"

"For what?"

"Proposing before he left?" He felt his next exhaled breath catch for a minute in his throat as she said this.

_(Marry me, Lu; he had whispered this with his wet mouth casing his ear, clutching his leg craned; sinful, eager, wistful—)_

"Who told you…—?" He began, heart thudding madly, and she gave him a patient, sympathetic smile.

"Suzaku said that it was tradition to ask the parent's permission. He asked Cee-Cee and Jeremiah before the carriage ride very nicely to get engaged to you." Nunnally recalled, humored by the small sounds of his bewilderment, "It's funny no one mentioned anything to you. They approved, of course. It probably happened while you were still asleep, brother."

He frowned. "What?" Nunnally put her hands on her waist, disappointed as she spoke, "You wouldn't have said anything to me?"

At the further, embarrassed silence, she laughed kindly.

"It's obvious that you both belong together. Don't worry. I approved his request, too."

Something in his chest warmed.

_Nunnally... you..._

"Nunnally... I hope that we can come back from this and..." He swallowed his pride slightly at these last words, "...you can visit Rivalz again." Lelouch leaned back, surprised as she hugged him tightly, weeping.

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An "addiction" required a user to have an overwhelming and unmanageable desire to persevere in the pattern.

Suppose if it was calories after calories of blueberry doughnut holes…

The newest occupant to the chateau's rather impressive dining room in the North wing ( _Purple Heart wood had been pulled together to build the contoured table tops, claw-foot side and armchairs, and the appliqués of the glass cabinets …many years ago the planning designer had a fondness for the color of Lelouch's eyes…)_ snorted upon entering.

Lelouch lounged on the padded, scrolled armrest of a round-back side chair, eating ravenously and shifted away from Cee-Cee as she approached him, raising a single, green eyebrow at his silent, gluttonous behavior.

"You are going through those like a pregnant woman." She continued wickedly, humming, "Won't Suzaku be excited to know he's fathering the baby?"

Unfortunately, ignoring her never ended like it should have, and Lelouch resorted to muttering vulgarly under his breath about ' _pesky witches who should mind their own businesses'_ and finished off the contents of the bag with a flourish, cringing.

"The withdrawal symptoms came back," she said grimly, and he elbowed past her — not wanting to hear it. Cee-Cee wasted no time to sandwich his face between her hands. Her golden eyes widened at the feel of his climbing fever. 103 degrees at the very least, and not showing any signs of relenting.

If it had been anyone else — _Suzaku or Nunnally or Jeremiah_ — they would have panicked and badgered him on why he had not alarmed someone sooner. But she was not that sort of woman, and they knew each other too well. When Lelouch protested, she held his head up attentively as the independent control of his own body waned, and they sank to the dining room floor together. His breathing rapid, shallow. Eyelids fluttering shut.

Her spice-mellow breath caressed his right cheek as her lips hovered against it, "Stick close to me… _"_

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* * *

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_The Refrain injector was full. Swooshing soundlessly in the vial applicator. Soundless cradled in his palm._

_"What are you going to choose now?" Milly asked knowingly — with her sandy-blonde hair curling gently to her cheekbones paled by their washed out surroundings (he… somehow… knew these hollow, white walls…) — with her golden-cloud (no… no… they should have been a -blue, blue- color…) eyes fixated on his perspiration-gleaming face._

_The point pricked him (…accidentally?). He let the delicate instrument fall, vanishing through the misting, colorless ground._

_"…No more."_

_Cee-Cee stood in Milly's place, an smile uplifting to her mouth. Her lime-green hair dangled over her arm as she reached her open hand to him. "You've made your decision. There are some things I need to talk to you about."_

_His unflinching hand slipped into hers, their fingers hooking easily._

_"What things?"_

_The pounding in his head lessened. Her cool fingers were a blessing to his temperature._

_"The destiny I promised your Mother I would see fulfilled."_

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	8. Chapter Eight

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"Did you hear that, men?" A male voice outside Suzaku's fluorescent-flooded cell echoed against his starved eardrums; one of the normally silent Imperial guards most likely, boastful in his speech. "The sneaky bastard has been caught! The Office of Secret Intelligence has sent the paperwork: Trained assassin. Specialty is close-range firearms…—"

He was interrupted by the sickening whack of bone against bone; a thud in the distance; a pained cry for assistance.

"—…And the twisting butterfly kick..." The male voice sighed heavily, fashionably jaded. "…Just bring him in."

A boy, much lankier and smaller than Suzaku, was thrust through the opened cell door, and scowling at his new manacles. The boy stared at the original occupant — with a clear green eye and another that was rainbow-swollen, mottled and abused Japanese features, and the precaution of a pristine-white, straitjacket minus the dried dollop-smear of blood on the front.

Through the crowd of the guards, the one who had been injured, cradling his broken jaw, started to approach the unimpressed boy with obviously murderous intentions. Suzaku lifted himself from his sitting position on the white painted wall, panicked, "Please, don't kill him!" he yelled. The guard answered his request accordingly, spitting in Suzaku's wounded face, hissing in agony but pleased with himself.

"We'll come back for you once we have your cell secured, brat," the head of the Imperial guards said with a warning tone, pushing the remaining guard out.

The boy with floppy, light brown hair snorted at the threat as the cell door shut, patting his black clothes, somewhat hoping for his custom jack-knife or a high-power laser pen they could have missed during the interrogation. After checking his empty gun and radio holsters for the umpteenth time, manacle chains clinking, he was starting to look _very_ pissed off.

He threw an ugly look at Suzaku who stared back at him flatly, asking, "So… what are you in for?"

Suzaku honestly didn't expect to be addressed. He blinked at him mystified for a moment, but did not open his mouth to speak.

"And that was stupid, you know. He could have killed you," the younger boy added scornfully. "…I don't need to be spoken for by the likes of you."

"Sorry."

The small boy nodded, seeming to accept Suzaku's apology, and blew the tips of his fluffy bangs out of his reddish-purple eyes. He murmured, but it seemed more like a private, reassuring discussion with himself, fingers at his front clasping each other harshly, "… _They made it out. They had to_."

"Were you separated from your friends?" Suzaku couldn't help but feel the need to interact with another living person. The promise of further isolation in this overly bright cell from other human beings closed over him like a dark, suffocating cloud.

This dark speck in front of him, this trained assassin, offered him a creeping, dangerously sordid smile.

"Have you ever heard of the Black Knights?"

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* * *

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_A stretch of sun-steamed highway, rippling invisibly. From it, Lelouch watched frozen as the chess-headed figure; black and indigo latex; a pink metal sword held aloft, moving in slow motion. The sword slide between the ribs of the robed man atop of the throne-parade car, releasing a brook of ribboning blood in mid-air, and the crowd beneath it both gasped horrified and cheered._

_Cee-Cee reached over, in a rare motherly gesture, wiping the red speckles from the edge of his cheek with the plane of her milky palm as she asked him, "What do you know about yourself, Lelouch?"_

_His doppelganger choked on the very air he breathed, clinging to his murderer, laying a benevolent hand on the chess-mask. "Shouldn't we…?" Lelouch managed to rip his wide eyes from the spectacle above him, in time to see her wave her hand up. Their surroundings melted away; the highway; the blood; the two embracing men; into the hollow white walls they knew._

_"An illusion," she replied to the questions already half-formed in his head. "Of what was. What can be. What is. But not you."_

_They were ghastly, misty spectators. Washed-out and colorless echoes of a physical bodies; naked but without sexual organs; breathing but without the routine. He saw it in himself as clearly as she saw him. This was…_ Hell _, Lelouch mourned._

_"It's not as tacky as that, stupid boy," Cee-Cee raised an eyebrow, intuitively. "It's the Realm of the Code."_

_"The Code…? What is that suppose to be a nickname for?"_

_"Doesn't it feel familiar to you somehow?" He didn't want to admit it aloud to her… but it was. She continued, "Everything you lost is here. Everything you can learn. Everything you will be. Or won't be."_

_"The cryptic riddles are getting annoying, witch."_

_"What did you think I was here for? Small tricks like making a broom sweep itself across the room?" She curled a lip, turning away._

_Lelouch rolled his eyes — what felt like his eyes — and walked to one of the walls._

_A framed, blank canvas nailed eye-level to him. Countless others blank canvases to other parts of the wall, some nailed partly over others like it had been an awful rush. Going on a warmly-whispered impulse in the very back of his consciousness, Lelouch touched his fingertips to one nearby._

_The canvas in front of him seeped vibrant colors. At the same time, the other canvases did the same. The image formed on the one Lelouch had touched; it moved — the chess-man held a gun out to a grinning, rose-haired girl. Lelouch felt his stomach drop as the gun went off, as her rose blood went airborne and she bent backwards, calling his name like a martyred lover._

_"Eu…phie…?" His paled, translucent hand brushed the moving canvas, rippling the catastrophic image, and shifting it to something else entirely._

_An empty wheat field outside Aries Palace. He wanted to go back._

_Who…was…?_

_"You killed her in other worlds."_

_Lelouch shook his head, answering Cee-Cee's statement with a dry mouth, "There's no such thing."_

_"Like 'pesky witches who should mind their own businesses'?" Her smile was not cruel. "This is a place where you can glimpse into these worlds. Or alternative dimensions. Whatever you would wish to imagine it as."_

_His same hand hovered, another ache in his system but different, as an image of Suzaku and Lelouch stood together on the roof of another Ashford Academy, identical in age, somber in facial expressions, and their arms crossed and leaning on the ledge._

_"Suzaku's here," he breathed with the smallest of smiles, longingly eyeing the baby-faced Japanese teenager in the canvas, who did not acknowledge him but moodily examined the other teenaged Lelouch avoiding eye contact with everyone._

_Cee-Cee gripped his shoulder, bringing awareness back to her presence, "He usually is always with you." He gave her an unreadable look._

_The image switched to a rundown warehouse. A dirtied and bruised Suzaku stood at the foot of concrete steps. The chess-man stood over him, extending his elegant, dark-leathered hand out to the teen in a universal sign of friendship. "Who is he?"_

_The immortal woman let out a low laugh. "You are him. And he is Zero."_

_"Zero?" Lelouch said, letting the unfamiliar word roll past his lips. She smirked._

_"The Knight of Justice. The Black Demon King. The Man of Miracles. Take your pick. The public loves you."_

_Lelouch retracted his hand from the framed canvas in front of him as the images started coming in faster. The chess-man removed his helmet, revealing violet-colored eyes. Another chess-man with emerald eyes. Another with flowing rose hair and chest bindings._

_And suddenly, Charles and Marianne were holding hands in one of the courtyards of the summer house. Lelouch said excitably, clutching the frame's edges, "Father is alive. So is Mother. Here…they were never harmed…—" He glanced at Cee-Cee who glared stonily in the direction of the Emperor's smug, wrinkled face. "Cee-Cee?"_

_"That man came to the Realm of the Code before."_

_Lelouch's colorless eyes rounded out. Child-like. "He's…really alive?"_

_"No. Not in your reality." He could have been mistaken but… did she sound relieved…?_

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* * *

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"The Black Knights." Suzaku mentioned, making room for his manacled guest wishing to squat by an open space at the foot of the tiny cot. "Who are they?"

The boy gave him an almost… _comically_ dubious look, "What rock have you been living under, kid? You really haven't heard any broadcasts? There are rumors floating everywhere about an underground resistance team working in Japan that exists to eliminate the scum governing us."

"And you are a part of this resistance team?"

"Some of us still believe there is hope for this country. And maybe everywhere else too that Britannia has a grip on. It's difficult to explain to a nonbeliever," said the assassin, crossing his arms grouchily. Suzaku waited until the other boy couldn't stand the growing silence any longer. "We believe that Lelouch VI Britannia is still alive." His large, reddish purple eyes glittered fervently. "We believe he's going to come back to tear this flawed government and build a new one. One that will inspire courage and peace in the hearts of its citizens."

Suzaku carefully hide his dismay and utter shock with a blank expression. "How do you even know he is alive?" he asked.

"See? A nonbeliever has no business in our affairs." The smaller boy began to scoff. "Why do you think Clovis la Britannia and Schneizel el Britannia are acting so strange? Raking the globe for a dead body? Panicking at the whisper of his existence? The Black Knights only want what would be better than this. For both Britannians and Elevens…" He stopped himself at the derogatory name, "…no offense…" Suzaku shook his head to show he had not.

"I shouldn't be talking about this. You aren't a part of the resistance. You aren't allowed our secrets. But I suppose it won't matter," the fluffy-haired boy said, glancing around the crammed, fluorescent-spaced surroundings with a haunted frown, "It's not like you'll make it out alive long enough to share what I've told you. This is the place where the memory of the sun is just that."

Suzaku asked, gooseflesh tingling his skin, "…just?"

"Just a memory of your past. Artificial light will be the last thing you see before you die."

The cell door clanged open. The head of the Imperial guards motioned the manacled boy to stand.

"You got a name?" the boy questioned.

"Suzaku. You?"

"Rolo Haliburton." He extended his hand to his Japanese companion, realizing his blunder too late when Suzaku looked down at his straitjacket and then smiled amused at Rolo. The younger boy curled the delicate fingers of his extended hand inward and patted Suzaku's shoulder awkwardly before walking towards the steel-cell door. "It was nice to meet you."

"Same here." Another clang as the cell door locked itself behind the boy. Suzaku let his head dangle back towards the wall.

The clouded feelings of isolation kissed his sleep-laden eyelids.

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	9. Chapter Nine

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_"What's wrong, Cee-Cee?" Lelouch inspected her white, grimacing face as it sank — as his own stomach followed suit. "...What about my Father?"_

_"Nothing," she explained calmly, starting to recover before his eyes. "The Realm of the Code helped him make a decision."_

_"What decision?"_

_"It doesn't really matter," Cee-Cee said without any deliberate elaboration_ _—_ _but that hateful spark in her liquid, pallid eyes remained_ _—_ _as she waved a hand fluidly in the air to dissolve the image in front of them. "We have something much more important to discuss."_

_He was getting sick of the mind games. Of being surrounded by these hollow walls. Of having to keep up with her._

_Lelouch sneered. A foul note to his voice. "And that would be, what exactly?" he asked her._

_She looked expectantly at him, her washed-out hair swinging around her bare, featureless front. "What do you know about your Mother? Or about your own life, Lelouch?" She stepped closer to him, so much closer, until they were mere inches from each other._

_"What do you think?" Lelouch snapped, flinging his arms out at her. "I'm the orphaned prince of Britannia on the run with my handicapped little sister! I witnessed my family being slaughtered when I was only a child… My only living brothers are trying to kill me… I'm beyond a shadow of a doubt in love with one of my male ex-students — who despite being mistreated for being Japanese — joined the Imperial army anyway… and…" His breath strangled a moment. "And… I killed…"_

_He fought to keep momentum, as Lelouch cringed the words through his teeth, cringed his balled up hands to his face, "And I tried everything…to forget her…I tried Refrain…and even that wouldn't…"_

_Cee-Cee held his hands from his face, squeezing his wrists lightly._

_"Your life means_ so much more _than that," the colorless woman told him, something aglimmer to fierce determination surfacing in her eyes, "What your life_ can be _. Finally. You, Lelouch VI Britannia, are the rightful heir to the monarchy. The only heir fit to take it back. Marianne made me promise to see to it that you would be returned to that throne. That is what she worked for until they set her on fire before your very eyes…"_

_The nearest, eye-level canvas alit with a bright, smoldering screen of flames and smoke. They backed away as it calmed._

_"We have failed every time," she admitted, dulled, wearied. "...In every 'here' you have ever known. Every one you don't remember."_

_"Why don't I remember?"_

_"I had to seal them away." Lelouch stared awed at her. "Due to the trauma you've experienced, I had to limit them further," she said._

_"But you remember? Every time?" He stated, gazing at her — not disdainful, but softly horrified by the concept, "And you have to bear it alone?" The ex-addict reached for her, for her arm, for her cheek, for_ _something solid. S_ _he mumbled her opposition to it, brushing him off like a insect._

_A little miffed at her behavior, he maintained, "If this is my Mother's wish and you are in fact the witch granting it… how am I to become Emperor to this country? That form of government has long since toppled into oblivion…" Lelouch scoffed. "And I would prefer that it stay that way," he muttered, feeling his stomach toss from its sinking feeling earlier._

_In fact, he was feeling queasier by the moment. Cee-Cee's eyes started fading in from pale to gold around the edges. "If you can't find a way to bring about a honorable government for your people, to become a symbol of justice, to avenge your Mother's death, or stop the remaining members of the Britannian Imperial Family…"_

_"…no one will."_

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* * *

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The taste of dried, bitter vomit on his lips. His headache throbbed slowly, webbing delicately in the veins behind his right temple. A long, pale green braid slapped his cheek unceremoniously not resting in his pillow as someone hovered over him, removing the soaked washcloth on his forehead.

"I never said it was a painless process." Cee-Cee folded the moist cloth in her gloveless hands and threw it into a basin of cool water. She added as he tenderly raised his head, smiling premeditatively, "…Your fever is gone, by the way."

"Appreciated," he remarked sardonically, his voice straining from his parched throat.

Lelouch went for his black-rimmed glasses on the nightstand by his mattress and then noticed it. _Absolutely_.

A clearly formed Cee-Cee raised a slender, faintly bemused eyebrow at his amazed expression, as he gently touched the skin around his... _healthy_ eyes, and her cagey smile then returned as he stared back, despite his tired body, rising to his feet.

"So... where do we start?"

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" _Yoooooooooooooooou_ —!" Despite how the loud clanging of his alleged 'flaccid muscles' boss beating the other side of cell door irritated the neighboring guards (he knew for a fact he would be punished thoroughly for his rowdy visitors later), Suzaku had to smile in silence with reassurance and cheer. "— _are in so much trouble when you get out of there_! _We have more experiments for you to run_!"

"LLOYD!" What sounded like Miss Cecile shouted in disapproval, and the Earl of Pudding's screwed up face disappeared from the cell door's window — Suzaku assumed to be pinched in reprimanding. " _This poor boy is being held up in prison, of all things, and all you can talk about is your EXPERIMENTS!"_

" _They are VERY important_!"

Suzaku called out from the cell wall, still grinning, feeling it strain pleasurably against the unused muscles, "I don't mind it, Miss Cecile! I suppose I should have kept my temper in check...!"

" _See? The boy knew he did wrong_!" What followed sounded like someone slapping someone's arm with a lot of force. A wounded howl.

"Suzaku?"

A pair of curious, slate gray eyes peered through the window-glass. "That you, buddy?"

"Rivalz?" Suzaku exclaimed, laughing. "I-it's good to see you!"

He shifted himself to his feet to meet level with those eyes, very much accustomed to doing it in the straitjacket by now.

" _Maaaan_... what have they done to you?" The blue-haired boy moaned, staring appalled by the mottle of bruises that were Suzaku's once youthful, handsome face.

Suzaku's grin twitched a little.

"...Don't worry about it. How have you been? What have you been doing in the settlement? Any news from Ashford Academy?"

Rivalz's own expression tightened. "There are... guards everywhere now. The streets get patrolled every night. There's a curfew. It all happened after the Headmaster was found dead..." The teenage boy watched the color of Suzaku's bruises drain completely away. "...I'm sorry I couldn't get a letter to you about it... but... you guys never gave me an address... how is Nunnally—...?"

Cold, stone silence followed as the sentence trailed off. Rivalz's face vanished from the window. Panic built in a pocket of Suzaku's bound chest. "Rivalz—? _Rivalz_?"

"Visiting hours have been shortened temporarily today," Schneizel said informatively, smiling tastefully with his professional white teeth as he entered the white-painted cell room accompanied by two of his personal guard. He motioned to his guards. "That will be all. This is a private conversation."

One of the guards shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "But, your Excellency..."

"Do not make me repeat orders." The smile remained strong.

The guard who protested let out a small shiver as they exited, locking the cell door securely behind them. The blond man observed the flimsy cot without so much as a batted eyelash before turning those seemingly _concerned_ eyes on the standing boy. "How _is_ Nunnally, Suzaku Kuruugi?"

When the green-eyed boy did not speak, did not give an indication that he heard him, Schneizel hmmmed.

"My little sister Nunnally was not suited for the sophistication and intelligence that was absolutely required in the game of chess," he explained softly, sweeping his gold-threaded cloak over his shoulder. "But Lelouch, my beloved and cruel Lelouch, was the only one to challenge me at it."

"You speak as if I'd know him."

"Perhaps you don't..." The blond man tutted him, beginning to pace the perimeter of the cell, inching nearer to the prisoner, "But surely you have heard the rumors of an uprising..." Suzaku gave him a mildly confused look as he went on. "A sort of _cult_ if you will... for Lelouch VI Britannia's return from the dead." A combat knife, simply crafted and unblemished, materialized from nowhere and into the wall by Suzaku's head, jamming itself strategically into that empty space, with the owner gripping the handle still and face-to-face with him.

"I will find out if you have been lying," Schneizel said matter-of-factly, as if softly chastising the other with common logic, "And I am fairly apt at knowing when someone is lying... oh, and just to be fair, I _do_ have a fondness for... _examining_... rogue prisoners..."

The knife unlodged itself from the wall, flaring metallic in the patient hand of its owner.

"Do be sure to scream."

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_They had to have made it out... They had to have..._

Rolo banged the back of his head to his plastic feeling mattress of the side of his tiny prison cot. Twice.

The distant blood-curdling screaming of another prisoner was becoming distracting to his own wallowing. _Yes_... It was stupid to be fretting or doubting his organization's members. But several of them, even when in a pinch... were not the brightest marbles in the bunch. Especially Tamaki. The poor bastard. If he was caught... there was a less than decent chance he could stand a week in prison... _if his captors allowed him live._

They were not invincible, no matter how many rumors he spread in the ghettos and urban areas that they _were_. That they could bring down the corruption of Britannia with one attack _alone_. No matter how many had faith in those rumors. Their members were flesh and bone. Less than organized. Less than trusting sometimes.

But they gave a _DAMN_ about the people without power in this country...! So was that _AT ALL_ worth to die for...?

"I can die here..." Rolo said serenely to no one particular, closing his reddish-purple eyes, lying his head back with a muted thump.

He half expected to hear his livid cell guard — the one whose nose he broke on his first day, and in turn... _personally_ requested the position — to stomp in and was not surprised to hear ruckus outside his cell door. Rolo slipped one eye open to see his guard stumble inside. Strangely gurgling. Gurgling on. On his own blood...?

Dime-sized drops of it from his trembling, parted lips. The guard's bulging, blue eyes gazed soundlessly pleading with a now fully awake Rolo as his body fell crippled to the white, now smeared floor. Rolo struggled to straighten up as another taller guard entered, helmet-less and staring at him sharply with hawk-like orange eyes.

"He's been detained, your Highness," Orange Eyes spoke, bowing and making way for another thinner guard.

When Thinner removed his helmet, Rolo was almost certain he was floating from his body out of pure shock and loss of oxygen from his lungs. Orange Eyes dropped the bloodied weapon in his leather-gloved hands and went to his knees beside the boy to undo the straitjacket.

"Rolo Haliburton," Lelouch addressed the boy, tucking the helmet under his arm, extending a hand in offering. He smiled charismatically. "Would you mind coming with me?"

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	10. Chapter Ten

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_"I believe there is an organization you are a part of that would be… interested in what I am proposing."_

That was the second thing Lelouch VI Britannia had said to him when he magically appeared to liberate him from prison. _THE_ Lelouch VI Britannia.

Rolo could have wept tears of joy back then — if he had been the sort of person to coddle those kinds of irrational emotions.

Several weeks past since. And his enigmatic hero had already bewitched the hardened and clouded hearts of the Black Knights members with his unassuming amenity and — _to be expected_ — his star quality. They didn't mind the quirks of preferring to work with them clad in his latex-tight and elaborately costumed attire, or wearing a cloth visor over his mouth when addressing them. It had been one of those times as Rolo returned from his brief mission outside headquarters — _personally requested_ by their new leader, he gloated to himself.

Since Lelouch VI Britannia's control on their affairs, the Black Knights were a fully integrated organization with what remained of the disheartened Japanese Liberation Front — and prowled the inner-city in the guise of nightfall to minimize the activities of major drug runners. It may have seemed like small chips to anyone else… but they were cleaning up the most _violated_ areas of the settlement.

That was only the beginning. Their savior was planning something huge. And Rolo couldn't wait to be let in on it.

He had been smug as he entered their leader's private quarters, wiping it clean from his face as he bowed — not even bothered this time with the arbitrary bouts of jealousy that happened to surface when the bizarre, green-haired woman hovered close by Lelouch's side. "My Lord Zero, I have acquired the items you requested."

He remained bowed as the older man took them from his hands.

"Thank you, Rolo." The boy glanced up through his fluffy bangs to see Lelouch had pulled down his mouth visor and grinned warmly down at him. Rolo could have sworn that he felt his heart stop sharply. Even for this brief moment. But he was a logical boy. Even so… he might have been... _captivated_.

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"That little boy out there has it bad for you. Surely you realize that…" Cee-Cee drawled, folding her arms together elegantly and stepping around him to stretch out down on a nearby sofa, the curtain of her lime green hair draping across her side. "…And _you_ are cruel enough to lead him on, you no-good fiend, you."

He responded with his back to her, giving her a preoccupied hand gesture, "If it inspires him to become more motivated so be it. I need him."

"Suzaku would disapprove," she pointed out, examining the backs of her hands and her dulled fingernails. When he cringed at his lover's name, when she craned her neck to examine his tensing form, Cee-Cee added perceptively, "You still can't find him?"

"I'm not worried. That meathead probably got himself into some trouble — and I'll just have to get him out of it," Lelouch said as nonchalantly as he could manage, wandering from corner to corner of the room absently, searching. When she raised an eyebrow at his behavior, as if he could sense its presence, he turned at the heel to her, insisting again, "…I'm not worried."

"I heard you the first time."

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The medics in the high-security prison dressed his mutilated neck and collarbone with sterile pads. Along with stiff gauze, however, also prevented Suzaku from moving his head in certain directions and gave him throbbing neck aches. He was thankful, however, that his vocal chords had been undamaged from Schneizel's prior visit to his cell. It was routine now. Being kicked by the guards during mealtime, on his bathroom breaks, _when they had free time_ … and seeing Lelouch's older brother had became less unexpected as well.

He often came into Suzaku's cell to inquire about his health.

"You look livelier today," the blond man this time commented with a practiced smile upon entering. His guards as usual waited outside for their boss, exchanging grim looks. And for a brief moment, Suzaku felt terrible for them. After all… they were responsible for cleaning up the mess Schneizel left behind as he had calmly hacked away at Suzaku's defenseless body. The mess must have _terrible_. He wouldn't know though. He had blacked out by the blood loss a couple minutes in.

When Schneizel reached into a hidden pocket deep in his lavished, white coat — Suzaku braced a little for that nightmarish glint of silver.

Schneizel chuckled at the Japanese man shrinking away from him, slipping into the open a small, folded square of laced fabric. "I wasn't aware that the Elevens were superstitious against linen handkerchiefs." He said, gently dabbing the back of his neck, "I have news from the outside, Suzaku Kuruugi. And unfortunately, you may not take it kindly." His periwinkle eyes furrowed with flourishing sorrow. " _Dearest_ Lelouch's body was found this morning in an alleyway... located in the Tokyo settlement."

"I don't believe you," came Suzaku's automatic, deadpan reply.

A quick flip of Schneizel's video-phone revealed an excellent quality, moving image of a swarm of people in black face-visors and dark uniforms—a tall, costumed man with a chess mask pointing a gun at a lean, young man with black hair — and then the gun went off loudly despite the small size of the speakers of the phone. Suzaku's chest, already bound by his straitjacket, clenched up instinctively so as the young man in the image fell limp to the floor of the alleyway.

( _It can't be. It isn't. Why would it—he—?)_

"The man who killed Lelouch VI Britannia is calling himself Zero."

Suzaku felt his cracked lips shift apart as he repeated back, uncertainly, "… _Zero_?"

Schneizel's tone was so _soothing,_ so _sympathetic,_ and so... _sincere._ "He is the leader of a new terrorist group. They go for small acts and produce devastating civilian deaths with all intents of striking fear into the hearts of Britannia's citizens. My siblings you have made friends with decided to return to the settlement from where they were hiding, and to the greatest misfortune of all, it led to Lelouch's death. The evidence is right here."

The blond man sighed heavily, as he flipped his phone shut, and reached into another pocket in his coat. Black rimmed glasses were presented out to Suzaku; the left side of them twisted as if stomped on. Blood glistened vividly between the fractures in the lenses. Suzaku couldn't breathe. ( _Couldn't_...)

"Regardless if you believe me or not…"

Schneizel went down on one knee in front of the stunned prisoner, those wide, emerald eyes staring into him with pleading, torn, and hypnotized by his _so sincere_ voice. "This Zero is out for blood. Blood of innocent people. Who knows who might be the next casualty? Your boss? His assistant? Your friends? Nunnally?"

" _I_ …"

"Will you sit quietly in this underground cell room as the world outside it screams for your protection?"

" _can't_ …"

"You are a trained soldier, young man. You are for the people."

"… _...yes_ …"

"Protect what is left."

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"Ashford's personal records?"

Lelouch nodded as he lifted the locked case from the box of miscellaneous items and fiddled with the mini electronic code pad. "He knew something. Something Britannia's government didn't want him to leak out. That's partly why they killed him in cold blood..." He kept the angered quiver from his voice, and with another finger tap, the case popped open.

"I'm impressed." Cee-Cee said blandly from the black-and-gold-decorated sofa, "Perhaps you -are- a warlock."

"There's no magic to it. The code's number was Milly's birth date." His purple eyes softened up in pain. "...It's always Milly's."

Shuffling. His shining, black gloved hands halt between the second and third stack of manila files he held up in the air. " _That's_ …"

"What?"

Without looking at her, Lelouch presented out a rough pencil sketch of the interior layout of the Britannian Embassy positioned in the inner settlement, and several more sketches of the set up of a detailed bombing system. Several more of anti-government files. He shook his head, forehead wrinkling. " _That's_ … not right. The Ashfords had always been loyal to the nation. Why would he…?" Another slip of paper he skimmed through was immediately crushed in his right hand.

"Bring Rolo in here, _now_ ," he muttered back to her.

Silence. Footsteps. The door fell open. Rolo peered in as the gold-eyed woman motioned him inside. "My Lord…?"

He frowned befuddled when his leader approached him from across the room, fury written on his pale expression.

"How long ago was it when the Black Knights formed? How did you get the resources for this base? The money? You _needed_ a _substantial_ amount of money to get where you were at when I joined this organization!" Rolo's purplish-red eyes ticked up in shock.

"Uh—well, we had an anonymous donation… he gave us enough to start acquiring the necessities for everyone _—_ …"

"You never inquired to a name? Nothing at all? How do you know you weren't being tricked by some Britannian official?"

Rolo huffed a little at the accusation of carelessness.

"We weren't going to turn down the amount he offered! It was _so much_. He said it went to a better cause… because…" The boy scratched his cheek, shuffling mentally through his memory for the words, "…because he 'wanted to see the children of both nations safe from harm'. Eleven or Britannian. He had a 'soft spot for children'." Still befuddled, he watched the green-haired woman leaning on the nearest wall and their stupefied leader exchange pithy glances.

"That will be all, Rolo." The boy hesitated, internally flinching when his leader then glared at him for it, and obeyed hurriedly. Lelouch ran his hands over his face. "Cee-Cee, phone Kento Sugiyama. We're going ahead with the schedule tonight. There needs to be another sweep of the Shinjuku ghetto before dawn breaks."

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Her bullheaded and _insufferable ass_ of a charge insisted on deviating from the rest of the troop of Black Knights in the abandoned warehouse, once the group of drug runners they captured were stripped of their ammunition and proceedings, and were tied up safely ( _nursing a bruise, sprain, maybe a broken nose or two_ ).

"Call it a sudden feeling," Lelouch murmured through his voice-modifier, successfully vanishing from the others with her.

Moments later, they heard a commotion. A squeal of car tires.

From around the bend of the warehouse's south exit, a gray, unmarked truck veered around them before crashing with its side propped into the wall. Smoke welled from the now wrinkled metal hood. The driver stumbled from the unscratched door of the passenger's seat, but the person himself professedly intact and unimpressed as he untangled his gold-lined, blue cloak from around his middle. A fringe of brown curls hovering above two intensely green eyes.

There was…something decidedly _numb_ about them, the woman thought to herself…

But Lelouch did not see it as plainly as she could… _maybe_ _love did make one blind_ … and walked towards the other man…

…and continued walking even as Suzaku retrieved his gun from his belt-holster and aimed for his abdomen. She knew she couldn't stop it even with the short distance.

And she hated herself for it.

Her charge's blood ornamented the grimy floor of the warehouse beautifully with his life, like a painter with savage deliberation.

One of his gloved hands covered the open wound to his kidneys as his other clawed the air limply at his side. Lelouch swayed, his helmeted head tilting frontwards as his body collapsed. When Cee-Cee took a step to the bleeding man, Suzaku leveled his gun at her instead, his eyes dimming from their intense color with detached realization, emptiness.

"You've been helping him this entire time, haven't you? How could you tricked us?"

" _You_ …" she snarled, faintly, "are a fool _…_ an absolute _fool_. Do you have the slightest comprehension of the deed you've committed here?"

"It goes against my beliefs to harm anyone. I know this…" He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than her as the handgun trembled wrapped in his fingers, " _I know this_ … but I am under orders to protect the people of this country."

"...Humans are _disgusting_. You are all so easily swayed by what others determine is 'right'. So, what did the government offer you? What could it have _possibly_ have been? The chance to become an official citizen to Britannia? More lovers than what could possibly satiate your _greedy_ disposition?" She leered nastily at the word 'greedy'. When the crumpled form on the ground whistled a agonized gasp through his helmet's visor, the woman stepped forward again.

At the click of the gun trained to the center of her forehead, she grinned viciously. "Oh, _please_. Do shoot me."

The gun shook harder. Suzaku's voice maintained its evenness. "You were a friend."

"The use of past tense is appropriate, I'll give you that much." Her gold eyes flared up with determined malice. "...I don't know what you have been hearing all this time, _boy_ , but I hope… I hope to the very bottom of your heart _…_ that you are satisfied with your actions today."

With that, a rain of bullets bore down on them from the ceiling. As the young Britannian soldier ducked from them, seeking shelter for the smoke-veil of the truck— she raced headfirst without falter to shield the shuddering form curled in his own blood. Cee-Cee tucked his helmet under her chin, feeling all sensations at once ( _the hot bullets puncturing her unguarded flesh; the cooling, sticky liquid on the ground caking to her hands; his droopy heartbeat with her chest pressed to his)_.

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_Suzaku—_

(baby-faced; his one bruised eye covered; his tan, boyish fingers fumbling clumsily but steadfast to work the skinny, red tie from his cream-yellow sweater vest...)

_Suzaku—_

(a shadow of stubble under the pucker of his lower lip; his eyes beet red from crying; those fingers clutching him were stronger than he remembered six months ago... _)  
_

_Suzaku—_

(flushing darkly over him; his brown hair dripping from the rainfall; he smelled like musk and the woods even in his hands sliding down his body attentively... _)  
_

_Suzaku—_

(no longer baby-faced; a thin, concentrated wrinkle between his eyebrows; those hands; something both hot and cold ripping; those hands not meant to kill...)

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Hands... Hands holding his. Dry hands. Feminine, willowy hands.

Lelouch's drowsy, violet eyes opened to unblinking, gold eyes.

Her favorite, tan blazer peppered with bullet scorch marks and bloody jagged holes. One of her hands untangled to touch his hairline.

" _Suz_ —"

Cee-Cee shushed him with a patient murmur, trailing cold, _blood-stained_ fingers across his clenching, ashen features. "The Black Knights had no choice but to retreat due to your injuries. The casualties of the ambush were few," she spoke informatively, bluntly, as if they were reviewing what could or could not be served for breakfast tomorrow, "You are dying. There is no way to stop your bleeding."

"... _why_ —?"

She pulled away from him to rise to her own feet, her face disappearing for a moment behind the solid screen of her bright, fanning hair.

"Ever since you were a child, you would question the world surrounding you, relentlessly challenging its morals, relentlessly challenging the 'righteous' system that impacted it." Those reddish fingertips plucked the shattered remains of the lead bullets from the pallid, lifeless skin of her arms as if they had been harmless pieces of grass on her skirt. "I thought to myself... with a mind such as this, what couldn't you achieve?" she mused.

"I'm going to give you my immortal life." As Cee-Cee said this _quietly; earnestly_ — Lelouch jolted into a sitting position on the cot, clapping a hand over his abdomen and feeling another excess of blood course out from his body. She shoved him back down. "You don't get to make this decision for me. It was one to be made once we were successful, once we saw this through to the end..." Cee-Cee glanced the _red, red_ blood fully soaking the sheets below him, his winded gasping, and pressed her lips together, tightly. "...I don't need it anymore. I have lived for too long with my burdens."

Her bright gold eyes widened in surprise as one of his bare, ashen hands shakily cupped her cheek.

She held it close to her cold skin, squeezing it, and rolled her eyes in mild exasperation. " _Aaaah_... what am I do with you? You are such a woman, Lelouch... you fussfuss _fuss_ over every little thing that I wonder how you manage to keep the ones you love sane..."

" _Witch_ —"

She crawled over his prone body lying flat to the cot, opening her slim legs to hover in a half-crouch over him.

Her queer, little smile surfaced mischievously. "I always wondered how a gay man kissed..." Her wet, little mouth descended on his, like a block of ice against his flaming features. He felt his breath pull agonizingly from his weakening lungs into hers and then returning hotly; a surge of power that made his hair stand on end; that twisted and spasmed every muscle; his colored surroundings bleeding away...

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* * *

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_Humans are many things all together. Disgustingly predictable. Fragile. Stupid. Hollow. Meaningful. Infantile. Brave.  
_

_He is many things. Kind. Righteous. Ferocious. Calculating. Possessive. Stupid. Beautiful. Skilled._

_We made love in Marianne's cottage that still stood unmarred. I had been a celibate, timeless creature for the past seven hundred years. Sex seemed foreign. Tasteless. Incriminating. Irresistibly human. He embodied all of these qualities, and made me eat my solemn words to avoid such encounters with my acquiescences. His skin was like molten caramel, flushing a sensual dark color in his cheekbones._

_At the cottage table the next morning, wrapped in nothing but a sheer tablecloth, I asked him if he thought I could love him. If he could bear the sickening thought of this deathless being carrying his children._

_He eyed my hands clutching into themselves with those burnt-orange eyes. He swept away the tablecloth, letting it flutter to our feet, and embraced me with his arms, placing his head on my shoulder like a child. I would always remember what he had spoken to me. How those words traced themselves into the white skin of my shoulder until I could no longer feel myself and slackened into him._

_He told me that whether or not we were human... we were destined to be suspended without motion, and a life with that adjournment meant little to him. But if we could continue moving forward from our pasts and from our mistakes... life could blossom anew. And maybe one day..._

_We could, too...  
_

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	11. Chapter Eleven

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The bleach marker borrowed from Dorothea removed the red splatters to his Knights of the Round uniform within a few minutes.

That had been the painless process. The hand soap from the dispenser he had rubbed raw into the side of his face, cleansed away the bloody gore flecks that had been drying on his skin on the way back to Britannian Embassy. As the only sink in the tenantless bathroom drained of remaining fluffy suds, Suzaku calmly spread his fingers across its porcelain, icy edges and threw up into it. His color upon returning to the common room had been that of a diseased oatmeal color and yet none of the other members of the Round raised an eyebrow at the new recruit. Rather, they were preoccupied by the flat television screen on the wall.

Dorothea complained from the perch of an armrest, swatting someone else's hand holding the remote control, "Turn it up, will you?"

"— _wind chill going to be high_ _around eleven this evening. So bundle up. I am here right now on the main avenue outside the Tokyo settlement's Britannian Embassy where the public execution of Nunnally VI Britannia is to commence shortly—"_

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( _commotions— voices— men— women— shouting— at her?_ _—_ _for her?)_

Nunnally kept her hands in a tight, lumping fist in her lap as a man she did not know at all pushed her wheelchair up a platform ramp.

At the feel of the leveled incline, at the feel of his momentary struggle with her weight, one of her dove-white hands reached up to tap his wrist with all aspects of a genuine politeness. "Excuse me…" She said courteously, with a heartfelt smile, "I can go from here."

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"— _she has been held accountable for numerous strikes against the Britannia government, including conspiring against the country and crown. Nunnally VI Britannia is one of the daughters of Charles di Britannia, deceased Emperor of Britannia, and of blood relation to the infamous traitor known as Marianne Lamperouge_ —"

Suzaku's nauseated stomach lurched again as the teenage girl in a white-and-magenta-overall dress began rolling her own chair up the ramp leading to the leveled platform, where a pleased-looking Schneizel and Clovis were surrounded by their personal guard and the executioners waiting for her.

This was wrong… he was fighting for peace… not slaughter…

_"…I'm not sure if they can officially allow her to do this… but she seems to be wheeling herself to her execution spot…"_

Bismarck caught Suzaku's arms powerfully as the Japanese man sprinted for the exit, and then shoved him back into the room with a leering grin. The rest of the occupants of the room kept their eyes trained to the television screen, ignoring Suzaku as he yelled at him.

He became a Knight of the Round to protect what remained of the Imperial family and of Britannia's loyal citizens…

"… _this is certainly a sight to behold, ladies and gentlemen… let me see if I can get a word…"_

The crowd on television — right outside the doors of this building — hushed in anticipation of her rolling form. She moved like a queen, with her carriage and spine erect in her wheelchair, tall, graceful, proud.

…what had gone horribly _wrong_ …?

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Amidst the growing silence, Nunnally could hear someone dear to her in the distance call her name, sobbing furiously. Her insides cringed at the noises Rivalz made and her own eyes began to well up. Fighting back that childish urge, she pressed forward, startled suddenly by the sense of someone crawling onto the rickety incline and security swarming them.

"I have every right to be on this public street and talk to this young lady!" What sounded like an angry woman, thrashing in the arms of security and managing to thrust a microphone directly in Nunnally's face, "Miss! Is there anything you would like to say to the audience before your sentence is carried out? Anything at all?"

"…Yes." Nunnally replied after a moment of thought, leaning cautiously into the object and half-frightened by how placid her own voice sounded in her ears, "A plea to everyone here today. No matter what country you are from, _please_ … follow your hearts. Do not give into others when they ask you to do harm. I know you will all do what is best for the people you love."

"…T-those are some inspirational words, Miss…" The woman said, taken off-guard by the young woman's gentle, innocent smile and " _thank you_ ". Nunnally did not complain as security decided to wheel her the rest of the way up and as delicate footsteps approached her.

"Nunnally VI Britannia… you are aware of the accusations held against you…?"

"Is that you Big Brother Clovis?" she asked, laughing a little out loud at his muted, choked noise behind a gloved hand. "Yes. They just informed me this morning on the ride back into the settlement."

Clovis made a haughty noise, rustling papers in his hands. "Nice try, little girl. How do you plead?"

"Guilty for the charge of being of my mother's blood… but no more than this, I am afraid." Another choked noise. Nunnally had to smile widely at the mental image of an older Clovis turning red in his feminine-like cheeks and pouting his lower lip as he had when he was teased mercilessly by their other siblings.

He really hadn't changed at all…

"You heard her. Guilty." The end of his cape brushed her knee as he marched away, heatedly. " _Ready arms, men_!"

Vaguely, for a moment, in her consciousness — as it refused to process that she was to die here now — Nunnally wondered how much it would hurt. Being shot through with bullets. Would it be painless? Quick? And in front of all these cheering people…? _Rivalz_ …?

She waited. She waited for what seemed like hours. Her heart thudding like a frightened deer. Another ruckus around her…? Nunnally jerked in place as an unusually loving hand placed itself on her trembling shoulder, accompanied by an all-too-familiar baritone, " _I'm here, Nunnally_ …"

"…Big Brother…?"

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This had not gone as planned. The executioners found themselves being held at gunpoint _by their own guns_ as several of their fellow comrades accosted them from the platform, leaving only the girl and… _Zero_ …? The crowd both booed and applauded wildly as the renowned and mysterious man stood tall beside the teenage girl, gripping her shoulder with a leather-gloved hand comfortingly.

"I have a question to address this nation…" He glanced towards the downwards direction of a nearby news camera. "… _Can_ you trust your government? _Do_ you trust them to tell you the entirety of truth regardless if it will look poorly upon them?" His voice boomed like magnification with his blood-smeared helmet's voice-modifier, " _Or_ is it possible for them to be lying? That they _have_ been? Tell me _what_ this crippled girl could possibly be blamed for… 'going against the crown'… how absurd…"

He chuckled as if somewhat amused by the impossible notion, slowly letting Nunnally's captured shoulder go. "Your government _has_ lied to you. And every fiber of my being is ashamed to be of royal blood ties to it…" As Lelouch lifted off his own helmet, the crowd roared in response.

"Lelouch VI Britannia is the traitor," he explained, raising his human voice to be heard over them, "not his victimized younger sister! If anyone is to die here today, it is to be me and I will take along with me on my journey into hell this hoax of a government building…" Lelouch dramatically threw off his gold-lined, black cloak, handing it to one of the supposed 'executioners' who obeyed without question. A pink-glowing bomb blinked repeatedly, strapped to his torso.

"Question your government! Why would they lie about my death?" A fierce grin formed over his lips.

"Well, they need not worry about my interfering… if the citizens of the blood-thirsty Britannian country do not take heed and leave this damned area, I am prepared to detonate this sakurite bomb… like the terrorist they have rumored Zero would be…"

Lelouch added thoughtfully, running his hands over the handle of his drawn sword at his hip, "If Marianne Lamperouge — the 98th Empress to Britannia's legacy — if _her blood_ ran with witchcraft then warlock blood is no better and must be spilled along with hers…" His violet eyes softened on the only man allowed by the 'false' security to crawl up the platform, his brow dripping with sweat as Suzaku appraised him from one end of the structure — _horrified; betrayed; relieved; scared_ …

"You do not disappoint to make a perfect appearance," Lelouch addressed him, tossing him the sword. The brunet caught it with both hands with little difficulty, shaking his head as if disbelieving, "Go on then. For our beloved countries. Kill me once again."

When the other man did not acknowledge the order, Lelouch sighed with a disillusioned air, and walked forward. Suzaku's hand flinched as Lelouch quickly ( _kindly_ ) raised it upright, directing the sword to point at the spot of Lelouch's chest were the bomb glowed and flashed dangerously bright. And just like that… _it was over._..

A pool of blood formed at their feet.

Awestruck, Suzaku viewed with wide eyes as Lelouch rammed the sword through the ticking bomb and his chest, effectively shutting down the detonation. To everyone else, it had looked like the Knight of the Round had saved them from impending death. Suzaku's name soared from the lips of both Japanese and Britannian as Lelouch's shaking hand on Suzaku's pulled the sword deeper until the hilt pressed sweetly and tightly to his shuddering ribs.

The black-haired man gasped lowly, blood flowing from his open mouth, his breath ghosting to Suzaku's lips inches from his.

" _Vivus_ ," Lelouch murmured before collapsing, before both old and "false" security started swarming up on the platform, fighting each other and around the body. As Suzaku backed away, someone slammed into him and seized his arm… with their helmet visor up ,he could make out a pair of reddish-purple eyes. Something pressed papery and crumpled in his hand before human warmth disappeared…

_The fourth level of the Britannian Embassy… five minutes…_

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"Vivus"… _to live_ …

A word in Latin, _of course_ — Lelouch had been a quirky riddle of a philosophy teacher — but what had it meant?

What could it mean now that he was…?

Suzaku could still hear the chaos of the outside world… could still hear Nunnally crying for her big brother…

Up on the fourth floor ( _so says the note slipped into his hand three minutes ago),_ the "false" security that hung around in the corridors glanced at him momentarily with their faces exposed by their removed visors and then went back to chatting amiably to each other — even with his numbed expression, with the caked point of the bloodied sword dragging on the carpet behind him. One of them broke away from the group to approach him.

A smallish boy with familiar reddish-purple eyes.

"Rolo?"

"Suzaku Kuruugi. I thought it was you." Rolo smirked, motioning him to a heavily guarded, separate room. "Come." Suzaku hesitated in the doorway as he was greeted by the sight of Clovis la Britannia and Schneizel el Britannia, bound and gagged, and kneeling to the carpet. "We've recorded their confessions of _treason_ against the nation. What would you like us to do with them?" He planted a boot to the back of Schneizel's bent back as the older man twitched angrily.

"…Why ask me?"

When the young assassin walked past him into the room in silence, Suzaku glanced into periwinkle eyes. He shrugged, feeling nothing really at all for his once capturer. "...Do whatever you want with him." Suzaku stepped around the chuckling 'security' men who dragged the ex-Imperial family out by the collars. "Why did you tell me to come here?"

"You'll have to bring that up with my superior. He should make his appearance soon. He would like me to express his thanks for your patience." Rolo's expression became wistful and his eyes narrowed slightly. "…You are _very_ lucky to know him as you do."

With that, a sharp rap came from one of the solid, sliding interior doors to the sitting room. Rolo answered it with a similar rap with his knuckles. A man in a loose, indigo-colored robe entered from that sliding room, leaning languidly with one arm over his head on the entranceway. His longish, black bangs slipped around his cheeks and obscured a beautifully violet eye. "Make arrangements for Shanghai." The man never took that eye off of Suzaku. His bloodless chest rising and falling. "Rolo, you can take your leave now." The boy murmured in agreement, bowing low, and shutting the door behind him securely.

Suzaku gulped audibly, vision blurred ( _by_ _tears…was that the burning he felt…he could feel again…_?).

At the noise, Lelouch said with mild disappointment, smiling, "Kuruugi-kun… what did the Stoics say about mourning? If you loved them, there is no need to be upset. You will see them again."

The blood-stained sword dropped muffled by the carpet fibers — _Lelouch's blood; in achingly heavy, possessive hands_ — as he rushed forward. Lelouch's arms were not warm in sensation but nevertheless welcoming as they hooked around Suzaku's broad shoulders, pulling Suzaku in closer to him as their lips crashed against each other, violently, profoundly, _lusting_ for a touch that had denied them for months.

Suzaku's hands searched him every inch for proof that this all was real, up his spine, his thighs, his unmarred chest, his neck… they settled to holding Lelouch's slim, pale face as Suzaku expressed his disbelief, "I thought you… but… _Zero_ was… you…"

"There is so much to say and not enough time for explanations, I'm afraid." Lelouch said sincerely, allowing Suzaku's thumb to settle lightly on his bottom lip, "Cee-Cee gave her life for me to aid my fight against the people who murdered my Mother. Now I am to walk this earth forever without the cycle breaking. The Black Knights have done their best for my cause."

"I don't…"

"I've already told you that there is no time for explanations…" A mysterious grin touched Lelouch's features. "…but there _is_ on the boat ride into Chinese Federation."

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 _"…the twelve year search for the missing ambassadors of the Britannia nation "Schneizel el Britannia" and "Clovis la Britannia" has been temporarily disbanded due to rising concerns about—"_ A scoffing grunt as the television screen went dark.

His enormous, intelligent violet eyes drifted over instead to a glass bowl of two goldfish swimming intently around each other. Which was a small lie. The new goldfish "Cee Two" which was tinier than Suzie still ended up being the bully as she chased the other goldfish. He felt the name choice had been mildly appropriate.

"Where did you go?" came a cheerful voice from the kitchen nook.

Lelouch poked his head in to see his casually-dressed lover lounging at the foot of the nook's countertop, fresh newspaper opened.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing." An older Suzaku smiled over the top of the newspaper. "I just missed you."

"…I was gone for _eight_ seconds…" Lelouch's indignation was interrupted by the screeching of the overflowing teapot behind Suzaku on the oven-top. He hurried over to shut it off. At his lover's snicker, Lelouch fumed with a furious blush, smacking the back of his curly head unkindly. Suzaku only laughed harder, rubbing the raw spot briefly as the immortal man went back to pouring tea.

"It says here that Nunnally was finally elected to be Empress," he informed a snorting, unimpressed Lelouch.

" _Hrmph_ … so they still can't get out of the old regime… She'll have her hands full certainly. I hope Jeremiah upped security for her."

"The people love her. It would become a mess if anything went wrong at her coronation." Suzaku asked as a steaming cup of tea was handed to him with a free hand, "We're watching it tonight, right?"

"Planned on it."

"It's not the only thing apparently she is going to be busy with." At that peculiar statement, Lelouch raised a suspicious eyebrow as he fetched a stirring bowl for his new dish, dipping a clean wooden spoon in. "It says here that she's sporting a new engagement ring from one… " _Rivalz Cardemonde"_ …"

The contents of the stirring bowl went slopping onto the floor as the bowl itself took a tumble onto the floor.

Lelouch's face twisted up livid and a quick-thinking Suzaku seized him around the waist from his chair, (fairly certain that if he had let Lelouch out the front door… that the next newspaper would be commenting on the circumstances of Rivalz's unexplained and _messy_ death…). He tugged the now surprised man into his lap, pressing his mouth wetly into the cold, white column of neck in front of him.

"Are you jealous of her…?"

Lelouch muttered, squirming as if uncomfortable by the whiskers of hair under Suzaku's chin. "Too itchy…"

"Don't avoid the subject," Suzaku said with a frown, running his fingers through Lelouch's long, dark ponytail with careful movements.

"You are going to get older every year, Suzaku. I won't."

"That's true. I will get old and wrinkly while you get the benefits of staying as the young and gorgeous man I married all those years ago…" ( _But we're not..._ ) Now very wide violet eyes blinked around at him as Suzaku smirked up at him. "What do you say, Lelouch? You never answered me properly back at the chateau…"

Lelouch reddened immediately at the sexual memory.

" _Idiot_ …" He breathed, burying his face into Suzaku's front, "All of you belongs to me…"

"I _do_ like the sound of that…" Suzaku said impishly, burying his own face into the soft top of his lover's hair.

Lelouch's fingers tightened into the cotton fabric of Suzaku's white, sweet-smelling tee shirt. "I will find you again… Suzaku…"

"…I'm looking forward to it, Lelouch…"

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" _I will find you again_ …"

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"So, how is dealing with the eighth graders? Little monsters, aren't they?"

His coworker ( _Karen, he successfully searched out of his memory at the introductory teacher's meeting last week; she had thrown a fit befitting her outrageously red hair about the broken coffee machine_ ) joined him on the bench on school grounds with a open smile.

He smiled along with her, for once, feeling that someone else on the staff was finally accepting him. He was a tad shy by nature when it came to Britannian affairs but working as a gym teacher and the kids was gratifying once he had been established in the Britannian education system as "honorary" regardless of Japanese blood.

"Nothing I haven't worked with before."

"They aren't giving you a hard time then?"

"Not at all." He found himself crossing his index and middle finger behind him on instinct ( _what a nasty Britannian habit_ ).

"I'm glad to hear it," she replied, patting his shoulder consolingly.

His emerald eyes watched her walk down the white-stone walkway leading towards one of the main buildings of the Academy. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five (three years his senior). At least someone else wasn't shy. He sighed, propping his arms on his legs as two teenage girls passed the stretch of lawn.

One he recognized as the headmaster's daughter with her blue, blue eyes and wavy, golden hair and the energy vibrating around her (— _it was TOO eerie how much she resembled her parent with their identical physical attributes and bursts of glee that reached into their smiles)._

Alongside her… another girl with straight, lush black hair that brushed the middle of her back like a living veil. A girl he was sure he had never seen in his classes. She must have felt his eyes on her because she gazed at him, her right eye bandaged completely and another eye so vividly a shade of purple that it weakened him.

( _she was…)_

Though it had been obviously a dirty look she was giving him… it was so dense with… _intensity_.

It brought the strangest fleeting ambiance fluttering wildly in him and… he couldn't get a firm grasp on _why_ …

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"Is there a reason you are glaring so hatefully at Mr. Kuruugi?" Milly tilted her head curiously. "What, did he try to sneak into the locker room while you were changing? Mr. Weinberg tried that, didn't he?" Her companion shuddered at the recollection of ' _that annoying, blond pervert'_ and continued to try fiercely staring down one of the newer teachers.

"Don't be stupid. He just keeps staring at me. I don't like it."

"You are so popular here at Daddy's school, Lulu… I'm not surprised all the men aren't after you." Milly teased lovingly, leaning forward to kiss both of her porcelain-smooth cheeks as the other girl leaned away from them, "Well, don't glare too hard then, darling. You never know… your face may get stuck on that mean and lovely expression of yours."

Lulu rolled her eye as her best friend went the opposite direction towards the Academy gates. She gripped her textbooks tighter to her chest as those (adorably innocent, her subconscious whispered and she batted it away) emerald eyes remained lock on her. Her insides gave a small flutter.

She began walking a little faster away—

( _he was_ …)

—without paying any mind to who else was on the sidewalk.

" _Damn it all_!" Lulu swore, taking a tumble onto the stone-path as another girl in their goldenrod uniform jolted backwards by the force of slamming into her. "…S-Sorry about that." She scrambled on her knees for her skewed textbooks, wincing at the small cut on her exposed knee.

"It's no problem." The girl above Lulu, her thick, lime-green hair done up in braided pigtails, then asked, a queer smile appearing on her face, "Actually, could you help me get around? I just registered for class today."

"Sure." Lulu rose slowly to her feet. "Though you could have picked up a map at the register's office… what's your name?"

But her green-haired classmate ignored that request and made an ' _hmmm'_ noise in her throat, peering over at Mr. Kuruugi sitting in the quad.

"…He hasn't stopped staring at you since we bumped into each other. I wonder why this is?"

A frustrated blush worked over Lulu's cheeks as her good eye glanced back at him, momentarily.

She said, grumpily, "He was hired here last semester. I don't know what his problem is."

"He seems to like you. Look, he's even blushing a little, too. Maybe you should go for it."

Her own blush deepened to an ugly, accusing color.

" _Says you_ …" Lulu murmured, shifting her books to her other arm and walking towards the administration building, leading the other girl, "You still haven't answered my question about your name…" A warm hand touched her shoulder reassuringly, leaving a lingering squeeze on Lulu's left shoulder.

"Don't worry. We'll get to that later. First, pizza."

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End file.
